


need a big god

by moonythejedi394, Neutralchaos, The_Omni_Princess



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Animal Death, Animals, Blood, Catholic Guilt, Cuddling & Snuggling, Environmentalism, Food, Forests, Hunters & Hunting, Hydra (Marvel), Immortality, Internalized Homophobia, Kissing, M/M, Magic, Mutual Masturbation, Nature, Nature Magic, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, Pagan Gods, Paganism, Poetry, Possessive Bucky Barnes, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Bucky Barnes, Reincarnation, Religious Conflict, Sexual Content, Size Difference, Slow Burn, Teleportation, Temporary Character Death, Vietnam War, World War II, anti-war, bogs, environmental justice, feral steve rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:41:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 39,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27825448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonythejedi394/pseuds/moonythejedi394, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neutralchaos/pseuds/Neutralchaos, https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Omni_Princess/pseuds/The_Omni_Princess
Summary: In the bogs and forests across Europe, there lives a spirit. It walks with the legs of a goat, but the head and hands of a man. In days gone by, people worshipped it. They called it many names. They feared and revered it.The modern world brought forth the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the forgetting of the old ways. As the 20th Century dawned, humanity began to overstep its bounds. Death and tragedy abounded. One soldier, not that different really from all the rest, thought to sacrifice himself to save the world. His body landed in a bog in Ireland. The old god of that land heard and came to answer the groaning of the earth.That soldier then stayed. He and the old god, they watched the world grow darker and more violent. They tried to help. Eventually, they did make a difference. Eventually.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 155
Kudos: 287
Collections: Not Another Stucky Big Bang 2020





	1. 0: Opening Monologue

**Author's Note:**

> **Notes for the Chapter:**

> _welcome to my entry to the (Not) Another Stucky Big Bang. did anyone ask for a fic about bogs and their sacredness to ancient celts and gauls? no? well, here it is anyway! enjoy!_

  
  


#  **_opening monologue_ **

  
  


_here’s a tale,_

_gather ‘round, ye merry men,_

_come close, and listen in._

_there once was a man,_

_young, fair, but weak_

_he was born acidic and spitting_

_at the world, he was happy to bleed._

_a man with a heart cold and sharp,_

_with a rage too large,_

_for a body too hard,_

_such that he could barely breathe._

_alas, dear listener,_

_he took a risk, took a leap,_

_and that anger did him in._

_now, see that man,_

_grown with humanistic power,_

_go to conquer, just because he can._

_see him there,_

_is he himself anymore?_

_now he has what he wants, does he still care?_

_he saw the blood they shed_

_and watched the men he worshiped_

_turn their backs on the dead,_

_let them lie in their stenches,_

_only brought home their riches,_

_and what then?_

_what new gods did the chosen people fall before?_

_what were their holy texts, their tenants of faith,_

_and to what end did they war?_

_what kingdom did those bombs free?_

_who found the bodies, who shooed the flies,_

_whose fields did that blood feed?_

_who was there for the soldiers?_

_who was there for him?_

_if a man falls with none to hear,_

_does he sleep?_

_if he sleeps with none to cushion his ear,_

_does he die?_

_if he dies, with no body to be found,_

_does he still somewhere live?_

_if he lies down in the bog,_

_amongst the moss and the lights and the fog,_

_does he still need a big god?_

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _i could tell you the schedule for posting this... or i could not! see ya tomorrow! or maybe not..._


	2. Act I, Scene I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _welcome, welcome, did anyone ask for a fic where steve is dead before he even comes on screen? no? how about one where he's dead and then not dead anymore and just very confused about whether or not he's dead? still no? too bad you already clicked on this_
> 
> **cw: DEATH, don't drop humans from large heights they will liquefy (sorta) upon impact**

#  _Act I, Scene I_

  
  


Over the years, many had taken their last beds in the moss and damp in the bog. In years gone by, the people used to leave their dead for the earth to swallow up, layering the peat with their souls. Then beyond that, they would leave sacrifices in the bog, spilling blood for the fealty of the earth.

Those days were long since past. Murderers left their victims in the water on occasion. Their deaths were rancid, their fear left a foul taste in the water. 

He set free their souls into new bodies. Those victims deserved a new opportunity.

He had a name. The people gave it to him; he had existed for so long, he’d never thought that a name was necessary. But the people, his people, gave him a title, one he once remembered fully. Now, it had been so long that he really only remembered part of it; Bucky. 

It was certainly simplistic, when once his people called him a god. He liked it well enough, though. 

He lived in the woods and in the bogs, in the heart of the earth where the stag lowed and peat grew, with few followers to worship him. Those that still did called him names new to him, but ones he accepted. Their energy fueled him in return, and with so little to sate him, he had little to give back. He gave them feelings of love and acceptance, all he could stir up. When he did not sense their worship, he slept.

So he slept. 

It was winter. Around him, the humans were at war. Their blood watered the earth to honor no power but their own hubris. He slept.

Bucky woke to a splash, a soul hitting the ground. With curiosity, he rose. His feet passed above the moss and water as he neared the ripples, the sight of the body. The mud around it, leading up to it, was undisturbed, as if he had just dropped from the sky. Bucky knelt, reaching into the water to turn the man onto his back. He was young and fair. He wasn’t quite dead.

Distantly, an explosion rocked the ground. Bucky jerked up to look around and saw a plume of water and smoke from the ocean just off the land. He looked back to the man and considered him. 

Bucky lifted the body from the water. It was broken, its insides destroyed by the impact into the mud. He had not the skill to repair it. He touched the face and felt the soul inside.

This man’s name was Steven. He had been born not very far from Bucky’s homeland. His ancestors had worshipped him once upon a time. His body was not what he had been born with, but had been mutated by humanity’s new sciences.

This body was unfamiliar to the soul in it. It was wrong. It was _foul,_ even, the heart that laid inside Steven was twisted and shrunken with guilt and pain. Steven’s soul hated its body. 

Bucky laid it back to rest in the water, where it would rest until the end of time, then took peat and moss from the ground. The soul would soon flee, and Bucky hated to see it leave that earth in such pain. He hated to leave its anguish in his waters. He began a shape on a raised bank of moss, forming into something that felt like what the soul used to have, what it longed for. 

Familiar, to Steven’s soul, was a man of thin proportions. Long arms and legs, narrow shoulders and hips, hands and feet a little too big to seem pleasing to the eye. The face, Bucky, found, was weary but kind. The nose was crooked, it seemed, and Bucky left it that way.

The soul of Steven soon left its unfamiliar body and Bucky took it. It sighed in his hands, and Bucky pitied it. He put it in the moss and mud and let that transfigure to flesh, flesh that the soul settled into with relief. 

The skin was pale, set close to the bone. The face was thin, deep bags under the eyes. Light freckles adorned his body, from his face to his ankles. He was yet still, of course. The soul was content, however. Bucky bent over it and breathed life into the lips. They were soft.

Steven took breath. His frail chest rose and fell, his lips parted as he inhaled and exhaled. Bucky brushed pale, golden hair from his forehead as Steven opened his eyes.

“Fuck,” Steven exhaled on his next breath. “Where am I?”

His gaze landed on Bucky. He inhaled again and fear tainted his body. He scrambled up and away, mouth agape, and then he looked down at his flesh and he inhaled once more. He began to choke on air; his very lungs were swelling inside, some fault that the soul must have been familiar with. Bucky reached out and touched his arm, letting the flesh heal itself of its trappings. Steven inhaled suddenly, his face turning pink. But he breathed easily.

Steven looked up again and just shook his head.

Bucky almost smiled. Modern humans were always disturbed upon first seeing his form. He stood as they did, his head and torso and hands were as theirs, but his legs were that of a stag’s, his head adorned with antlers, long tusks split open his mouth from his lower jaw, and he was covered in much more hair than any human, thickened into fur at his hipbones and covering his legs. Certainly, more hair than Steven, whose nakedness was barely interrupted with its wispy, nearly clear hair.

“Who are you?” Steven asked.

It had been a long time since Bucky had spoken. He cleared his throat first.

“I am an old being,” he said. “Humans called me many things. I like to be called Bucky.”

Steven let out a sudden laugh; cold, humorless. Scared. 

“Oh, god,” he whispered.

“They have called me that, as well,” Bucky agreed.

Steven laughed again. He fell onto his back, looking up at the sky, and then sat up just as quickly and looked at himself, his newly formed flesh. He looked at his hands, his arms, his chest, legs, and knees, as if not believing what he saw, and then glanced back up at Bucky.

“You’re not human,” he said, somehow almost questioningly. “Did you – Did you do this to me?”

“It was what your soul preferred,” Bucky answered.

“Huh…” Steven said hoarsely. “How?”

Bucky looked around, then picked up the peat and the moss. He held them up. Steven let out a weak noise.

“You will lack strength,” Bucky said, rising upright. “I will provide you with food. Come with me.”

Steven looked around. His gaze landed beyond Bucky, to the body resting beneath a few inches of water amongst the mud. He stopped breathing. He lifted a shaking hand, just pointing. Bucky took his shoulders and pulled him up.

“That –” Steven whispered. “That’s –”

“Leave it,” Bucky said gently. “Come. I will feed you.” 

Steven followed the pull on his shoulders. His feet sank into the mud and he stumbled, ungainly and clumsy, so Bucky lifted him by the waist and put him on his shoulder. Steven cried out and grabbed onto Bucky’s antlers, clinging to them. Bucky chuckled.

“Are you going to eat me?” Steven asked.

“No,” Bucky said, walking across the bog. “I do not eat humans. The meat is much too stringy and dry.”

“Oh, god,” Steven whispered again.

Bucky chuckled again.

He re-entered the forest and put Steven back on his feet, now that he was on solid ground again. Steven hugged himself, both hands cupping and hiding his genitals from view. Bucky turned back to the bog and lifted a sheet of moss, then blew warm breath on it to dry the moisture from it. He shook it, then draped it over Steven’s shoulders. Steven looked surprised, but he wrapped the green blanket around his body.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

“Follow me,” Bucky told him.

Bucky’s feet did not touch the ground as he walked. The brush of his fur was loud to his ears, while the animals of the forest lowered their voices in reverence. Steven looked around, his eyes wide and wild, as he examined the trees.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“My lands,” Bucky said, looking around to the trees, as well. “This place borders An Mhuir Cheilteach, on the isle humans call Φīwerjon.”

“What?” Steven replied.

Bucky glanced back at him. “Φīwerjon,” he repeated. “That is what the people call this island. You were born not far from here, in the south.”

Steven blinked. “You mean Ireland?” he said.

Bucky tilted his head. “Perhaps the name has changed. I know some people call this place Īweriū as well, or Éire.”

“Ireland,” Steven repeated. “It’s called Ireland now.”

“I see,” Bucky answered, looking ahead again. “This is my favored domain, but I live in the forests and bogs across this part of the world, in any place where trees grow around peat bogs and the stag runs.”

“Oh,” Steven muttered. “Wait…” 

Bucky turned back, lifting an eyebrow.

“Are you –?” Steven began. “Are you Cernunnos?”

Bucky tipped his head to the side. “I believe I have been called that among other things,” he answered.

“Oh, god,” Steven whispered yet again.

Bucky touched Steve’s shoulder and guided him forward again. “You need not be afraid, human,” he said gently. “You will come to no harm here.”

Steven hugged the moss closer to his body. He was shivering. Bucky stooped and lifted him again, holding him in his arms this time. Steven was stiff, he gasped again, but as Bucky rubbed his large hands over Steve’s pebbled flesh, he grew more pliable.

“I will give you clothing that is warmer,” Bucky told him.

“Okay,” Steven said quietly.

They reached his cave. Bucky pulled aside the moss curtain covering the entrance and took the steps into it. Steven looked around in wonder, then made a pitiful noise as he saw the round hearth in the center of the cave. Bucky put him down again and Steven ran for the heat. It made Bucky smile, remembering the days when humans fell prostrate to himself and those like him for the gift of fire.

Bucky took a large cloak of deerskin and knelt by Steven’s side. Steven looked up at him, then smiled – just a little – and took it. He wrapped himself in it, then pulled the moss out from beneath it. He looked at it for a moment.

“What should I do with this?” he asked.

Bucky took it and tossed it into the fire. Steve’s eyes widened as the light flared, the dapper of illumination highlighting the weariness beneath his eyes and the leanness of his face.

Bucky had not had a human this close to him since the people ceased leaving sacrifices to him. He had not realized how much he missed their companionship.

“I will return with food you can eat,” he said, rising to his feet again. “Do not leave the cave, or you will be lost and you won’t find your way back.”

Steven looked up, biting his lip. He nodded.

Bucky took up his spear and knife and left the cave again. He did not eat as humans did, but the hunt was part of his practice. He found a stag beyond his prime, who had not fathered calves in autumn, and slew it. He put its corpse over his shoulder and took the long path back to his cave, stopping by the bog to gut and bleed the animal. He let the mud claim the insides, an offering to the earth. Then, he returned to the cave.

Steven had gone. Bucky sighed and hung up the carcass where it could drip blood out of the way of living, then he left the cave.

Steven was walking in circles around the forest. Bucky walked through a shadow and appeared at his side. Steven jumped and screamed at the sight of him. Bucky gave him a disheartened look.

“I told you you would be lost,” Bucky said. “This place is magic. It disturbs the human mind.”

“I –” Steven stammered. “I just – I wanted –…”

Bucky tipped his head to the side. “What?”

Steven looked guilty. He was almost dwarfed by the cloak of skins he was wearing, which Bucky had put together for his own use. He was comically small in it.

“I don’t know,” Steven said. “I – I saw my own body? I’m dead, aren’t I?”

“In a way,” Bucky agreed. “This flesh is alive, yes, while the flesh that you saw is dead.”

“But I’m _dead,_ ” Steven insisted. “I _died!_ ”

Bucky offered a shrug. “You still breathe. Your heart beats.”

“I’m dead!” Steven abruptly screamed.

Bucky lifted his eyebrows. Steven panted for breath, now looking around.

“I wanted to see if the forest would end,” he said. “If I could get back to – to people. Or if this is just… Death.”

“The forest ends,” Bucky said. “Take my hand.”

Steven looked at him. Bucky lifted his hand, expectant. After a heartbeat, Steven put his significantly smaller hand in Bucky’s.

Bucky took him close and led him through the shadow again. As it enveloped them, Steven gasped and clung harder to Bucky, then at once, they were in the light again and Steven exhaled sharply.

Bucky guided Steven to the edge of the trees, to where the cliffs stood over the seaside. Steven looked around, the softer illumination highlighting the color of his blood just under the skin of his cheeks. Bucky set his hand on Steven’s shoulder and looked with him across the An Mhuir Cheilteach.

“We are in Ireland,” Steven said quietly. “This – This the Celtic Sea?”

“It is a sea in the land of the Celts, yes,” Bucky answered with a chuckle. “In days gone by, humans called it An Mhuir Cheilteach.”

Steven seemed at a loss for words. He looked and shook his head. The sun was dipping towards the horizon in the west, leaving gold and orange stains across the breadth of the ocean, casting long shadows on the rocky beach below. Steven stepped close to the edge and looked down, then inhaled sharply again and stepped back, grabbing for Bucky’s arm again.

“Am I in Tír na nÓg?” he asked.

“No,” Bucky answered.

“Is that even real?” Steven added, looking up at him.

“Yes,” Bucky answered. “It – It is hard to explain so you will understand. It has many names, and it is where the souls of your people go after death.”

“Have you been there?” Steven asked again.

Bucky smiled. “No, human, I have not died.”

“Oh,” Steven said.

“Come,” Bucky said gently, “you need to eat.”

Steven let Bucky pull him from the cliff. He seemed hardly fazed by passing through the shadow a second time.

Bucky took them back to the cave. Steven gravitated to the fire once again, his frame folding underneath the cloak. Bucky watched him for a second, then turned back to the carcass of the stag hanging in the corner. Bucky skinned it, most of the job already done, and put aside to tan later. He cut meat from the rear thigh, then took it to the fire. Steven looked up and looked at the cut of meat in Bucky’s hand and he already licked his lips. Bucky lifted a flat rock and put it in the hearth, then moved the flaming logs aside and pulled together the coals. Steven gasped as if in pain.

Bucky looked up, holding a lump of coal. “Are you alright?” he asked.

Steven pointed at the coal in his hand. Bucky looked down at it, then up again.

“You can’t have this, it would burn your skin,” he said.

“I – Duh!” Steven spluttered. “You’re not burned by it?”

“No,” Bucky answered, putting it back. “I am not human.”

Steven just made a confused sound. Bucky laid the flat rock on the coals, then put the two flanks of meat on it. He wiped his hands on a cloth and went to fetch some salt and rosemary for flavor.

“What are you gonna do with me?” Steven asked.

Bucky glanced in his direction from rifling through his spice and herbs cabinet. “I will do nothing with you,” he said. “You are your own to do with.”

“But you – you made me,” Steve said. “You _made_ this – this body…”

“Your soul inhabits it,” Bucky answered. 

“Why?” Steve asked.

Bucky straightened up, salt and rosemary in hand, and tipped his head to the side. “Why what?”

“Why put my soul in a new body?” Steven asked. “Why not just – Just let me die?”

Bucky considered this. He moved back to the fire and spread the salt and rosemary on each side of the meat, then set it aside and did the same to the other. He wiped his hands clean again.

“That body was warped,” Bucky said. “Your soul no longer belonged in it. It would have sent you on in pain.”

“I don’t remember hitting the ground,” Steven said softly. “I – I don’t think I felt any pain.”

“Not pain of the flesh,” Bucky insisted. “Your soul was in pain. It would’ve tainted the bog’s waters.”

“My – my body is still there,” Steven said.

“And your soul didn’t perish in misery,” Bucky said in return. “That flesh will do nothing to the water. It is only flesh.”

“So –” Steven began, and then stopped.

Bucky sat down and rested his hands on his knees. Steven looked at his legs, then at his own and shook his head. Bucky looked down and smiled to himself, amused by humanity’s continuing confusion at his form.

“What do I do?” Steven asked. “With myself? Now? I –”

He glanced up and away rapidly, staring into the fire. He clenched his jaw, but his silence was telling.

“What do you want from me?” Steven asked.

“Nothing,” Bucky answered with a shrug. “When you are recovered, I will escort you from my lands if you so wish.”

Steven looked at himself. He sighed.

“I don’t know,” he said softly. “I – I don’t know what to do.”

“Take the time you spend here to think about it,” Bucky told him, leaning forward to flip the meat again.

Steven hummed. Bucky banked the coals higher around the rock the meat rested on, flicked the ash and sparks from his fingers, and leaned back on a cushion. Steven let out his breath, a weary sigh, and looked in Bucky’s direction.

“Oh, Jesus!” Steven gasped, looking away. “That’s – That’s on display, pal!”

Bucky looked down at himself, and chuckled as he realized Steven was embarrassed that Bucky’s cock was visible amongst his fur. He lifted his legs, setting his hooves against the stone hearth, and allowed his thighs to raise up so as to hide himself from view.

“Humans care for the body to be hidden?” Bucky surmised. “What an odd practice.”

“Yeah, well, we tend to not go around naked,” Steven muttered.

“I am not naked,” Bucky pointed out, plucking at his fur. “I am warm and my skin is protected where it needs to be. Thus, I am not naked.”

“So says you,” Steven grumbled, glancing at Bucky’s lower half once more. “Jesus…”

“What is this _jesus?_ ” Bucky asked.

Steven opened his mouth. “I –” he started. “Well… I’m not sure he’s real now. His whole deal insists… you…”

Bucky raised his eyebrows. Steven looked away, and then he laughed coldly once more.

“Fuck, look at me,” he said. “I’ve blindly accepted the giant half-deer man is a god.”

Bucky said nothing. Steven pulled the cloak around him tighter.

“I don’t know,” Steven added more softly. “I don’t know what to believe.”

Bucky pushed up, then moved onto his knees and rested his weight on his hooves. He held his hand out to Steven and blew into his palm. Fire was born from his breath and curled into a sphere in his hand, twisting to and fro. Steven looked at it in awe, the light reflected in his eyes.

“Do you believe what you see?” Bucky asked.

“I –” Steven said. “I don’t know…”

Bucky cupped the fire in both hands and blew on it again, then took Steven’s hand and pulled it close. He poured the fire into Steven’s palm, even as Steven gasped in fright. 

“Do you believe what you feel?” Bucky then asked again.

“It –” Steve whispered. “It… tickles?”

Steven cupped the fire in both hands. He laughed softly. The reflection danced in his eyes, making them appear a warm brown; much like the peat from which his body had been formed.

Bucky laid a hand on Steven’s shoulder. Steven was enraptured by the fire in his palm. He didn’t look up. Even with the fire in his hand, Bucky sensed that Steven held doubts.

“Tell me what you fear,” Bucky asked.

Steven let out his breath. He hunched in on himself, bringing the fire closer, and lifted a finger to touch the tips of the flame.

“I’m dead,” Steven said. “This… This is death.”

Bucky touched Steven’s face. Steven looked up, eyes wide, startled.

“I cannot prove to you that you are not dreaming,” Bucky said. “The same that I can not prove that you are alive. You will have to decide for yourself.”

“What are you?” Steven asked.

Bucky chuckled. He released Steven’s shoulder and reached into the real flames to flip the steaks waiting for them. Steven cradled his palmful of fire close.

“I have been called many things,” Bucky said. “I have known many people. I have existed for a very long time.”

“But –” Steven started. 

Bucky sat back again, extending his legs, to wipe his fingers clean on the cloth resting on the stone ring. Steven looked over at him, his gaze dropped abruptly, and then he flushed and looked away.

“But what?” Bucky prompted.

Steven shrugged. “You’re old,” he said. “But what are you?”

Bucky thought about it for a moment, then he, too, shrugged. “I am me,” he said. “I have existed so long, I do not remember not existing. I do not remember the beginning. I just was, I am, and I will be.”

Steven bit his lip. He looked into the fire in his hands, and then, curiously, he cupped it between his palms, hiding it from view. After a moment, he opened his hands again to look, and the fire had gone out.

“Why would you do that?” Bucky asked gently.

“I thought it would stay lit if it wasn’t real,” Steven said quietly. “But… It went out.”

Steven wrapped his arms around himself. Bucky sighed and prodded the steaks.

“I do not have the ability to alter time,” he said, as soft as Steven. “I will do my best to see you enjoy your new life.”

Steven didn’t answer. He stared into the coals, the gentle spark of delight that holding fire in his palm had brought now gone.

Bucky sighed. He got up and fetched a few large, thick leaves, then pulled the meat from the coals and put them on the leaves. He set one near Steve and put the other in front of himself, wiping his fingers clean on a rag.

“It’ll be hot,” Bucky warned.

“Have you got forks?” Steve said.

Bucky looked at him. “I assume not, I don’t know what that means.”

Steve shrugged. “A knife?”

Bucky got up again. He fetched a small trimming knife, one that would fit in Steve’s hand best, and gave it to him. Steve took it and touched his steak with hesitant fingers to cut up the meat. The knife was still much too large in his hands. Bucky sat again and just used his hands to pick up his steak and eat it.

“I can make new tools,” Bucky offered. “I’ll make you a fork. Whatever it is.”

“It’s a tool,” Steve absently. “Like… like a small trident, you hold in your hand. You use it to hold food still, pick it up. Instead of your hands.”

“I’ll make some,” Bucky offered. “And some knives for you. Your size.”

“Thank you,” Steve said softly.

Steve picked up a slice of the steak and popped it into his mouth. Bucky gave him an encouraging smile and bit into his own, tearing it with his teeth.

“It’s good,” Steve commented. “Very good.”

Bucky gave him a nod. “If you’d like something other than a thick steak to eat at any time, there’s lots of wild vegetables and mushrooms in the woods.”

“That sounds nice,” Steve answered.

“I make quite a nice mushroom fry-up, if I do say so myself,” Bucky added.

Steve nodded and smiled. He nibbled more on his steak, leaning over the thick leaf in his lap. Juice from the meat dripped from his fingers in long lines, catching in the creases of his knuckles. 

Steve’s hands were very small. All of him was quite small. Bucky hadn't cut his steak much smaller than a portion he’d eat himself, and in hindsight, he realized it would probably be too large for Steve to eat.

“You needn’t finish it all,” Bucky told Steve. “Eat what you feel comfortable eating and leave the rest.”

“Will it spoil?” Steve asked.

“I might eat it,” Bucky said. 

Steve tensed up. “I’d feel terrible wasting food,” he said.

Bucky hummed. “Or I could pop it in the ground,” he told Steve, “bring up some nice mushrooms. Or toss it to the wolves, or a fox. Something’ll eat it, one way or another. It wouldn’t be a waste.”

“Oh,” Steve said. “Alright.”

Steve tucked in again, this time with a bit more gusto.

He didn’t finish it all, as Bucky had thought. He ate maybe half, then started to slow. 

“Don’t overdo it,” Bucky warned him. “You did just die and come back to life.”

Steve snorted and covered his mouth with a hand. He swallowed, his throat bobbing, then he put aside the leaf with the remains of his meal.

“Thanks,” he said. “Maybe I can eat the rest tomorrow? Will it keep that long?”

“I’ll cook more tomorrow,” Bucky offered. “We’ll put that outside and let one of the animals eat it.”

Steve nodded. Bucky reached over and picked up the leaf by its sides, pulled it closer, and settled on his haunches again to finish off his slab of meat. Steve curled up under the fur cloak, pulling it tight around his middle, then yawned; it was quite cat-like, his teeth were perhaps a little sharper than the average human’s. Perhaps Bucky had made a small error in forming them, but they suited him.

Bucky got up. He left Steve to blink slowly at the embers and took what was leftover of his supper outside. He let out a low growl, shook his head back, then howled. He waited a moment. Bucky growled again into the night, then a fox peeked out of a shadow of a twisted, fallen log. Bucky knelt down and laid the leaf on the ground, then picked up a piece of the meat and held it out. The fox darted up and licked it from his fingers, crouching low on the ground to chew and swallow. 

Bucky fed the animal a few more pieces. A couple of wolves padded into the clearing and Bucky gave them each a little bit. A hawk landed on his shoulder and Bucky fed it, too. A stoat ran up to him, darted right under the paws of one of the wolves, and climbed up his knee to eat from his hand. Bucky let the animals lick his fingers clean, then gave the wolves and the fox a scratch behind the ears each, plucked some debris from the hawk’s tail, and rubbed the stoat’s belly. When the meat was gone, the animals dispersed into the forest once more. Bucky pushed up and scraped at the earth with a hoof, dug a small hole, and buried what remained of the leaf and the juices it still held. Something would come of it, the soil would be enriched somehow. Bucky brushed off his hands and knocked his hoof against his other ankle to free the soil from it, then turned back.

Steve stood at the entrance to his cave, his eyes wide in awe. Bucky lowered his head to enter, his antlers brushing against the top of the entrance.

“They ate from your hands,” Steve whispered.

“Yeah,” Bucky answered him with a gentle smile. “I am their protector. They trust me.”

Steve looked at Bucky’s hands. His eyes were still wide. Bucky picked up one of Steve’s hands and held it in his; Steve’s hands were so much smaller.

“If you stay,” Bucky began softly, “they’ll learn to trust you as well.”

“Really?” Steve murmured. “Will a wolf eat from my hands without biting me?”

“I’m sure of it,” Bucky told him.

Steve bit his lower lip, denting the skin pale next to the plush pink of the rest of his mouth. Bucky lifted a hand and cupped Steve’s chin, lifting his face, and Steve met his gaze with wide eyes. Bucky smiled at him and Steve’s face turned pink as his lips.

“I imagine you’re tired,” Bucky said. “I only have one resting place, but it gets cold at night, so it may be best if we share.”

“Alright,” Steve said softly.

Steve’s face was still pink. Bucky lifted his hand from his chin to touch his cheek again, finding it warm under his palm.

“Are you alright?” he asked. “You’re flushed.”

“Yes, of course,” Steve answered rapidly. “I’m fine. It’s fine.”

Bucky leaned closer. “Are you feverish?” he asked. “Do you feel lightheaded?”

“No,” Steve said, answering just as quickly as before, and his face got pinker. “I’m fine, really.”

He broke eye contact, looking down Bucky’s front, then inhaled softly and pulled away, covering the lower half of his face with a hand. Bucky touched Steve’s shoulder gently.

“Would you like some water?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Steve mumbled. “Yeah, that’d be nice.”

Bucky stepped further into the cave. He’d brought up a small spring inside the confines of his cave for convenience. He had a rough wooden bowl he used for drinking, so he filled that and took it to Steve. Steve took it from him with a muttered thanks and drank heavily. Bucky lingered, still concerned by the pinkness of Steve’s cheeks. His ears were pink, too, and what Bucky could see of his neck and shoulders under the cloak.

“Um,” Steve said, lowering the bowl, “is there a place I can, uh, relieve myself?”

Bucky frowned. “I’m not sure I know what that means.”

Steve cleared his throat. “Piss,” he said.

“Oh,” Bucky answered, smiling. “Yes, I’ll show you.”

Steve put the bowl down. Bucky took him out of the cave, around to the side, to a second smaller cave with a latrine.

“There’s a shovel if you need it,” Bucky told Steve, pointing it out. “The leaves of the plant just outside are quite soft, as well.”

Steve nodded gratefully. Bucky left him to do his business, trusting he’d come back.

Bucky’s nest was built in the back of the cave, within an indent he’d carved into the rockface. The alcove was his length and a half in width and depth and tall enough that he could sit on his bottom and sit upright comfortably. Over the years, he’d lined it in fur blankets and pillows stuffed with feathers collected from the forest or moss from the bog. He changed the bedding every so often, but he couldn’t recall how long it had been since he had done it last. He decided to replace the furs while Steve was there. 

Bucky shuffled into the nest and gave a few of the furs a deep sniff; they smelled fine, only like him. Steve would probably end up smelling strongly of him as well, sleeping in his nest, but the thought didn’t bother Bucky. He rearranged some of the blankets and pillows, making it neater and more accessible to two people, then lay down with his head nearest the entrance to wait. He shut his eyes, letting his breathing deepen, though he didn’t feel weary. Which was odd.

Perhaps it was Steve. Perhaps his presence was enough to satisfy Bucky’s need for energy.

Steve took a while to return, long enough that Bucky almost grew concerned. But he did and Bucky sat up, turning on his front to lean on his arms, and smiled as Steve approached. Steve knelt at the entrance to Bucky’s nest and looked into it with wide eyes once again.

“You alright?” Bucky asked.

“Of course,” Steve said, his voice squeaking a little. “This, um, this looks comfortable.”

Bucky nodded. Steve licked his lips, then crawled inside. Bucky turned onto his side as Steve turned around to face the entrance, studying him. Steve’s ears were still pink. His scent had changed since going to pass water. Steve lay down with his back to Bucky, but Bucky leaned in close and sniffed him.

He smelled like sex, and Bucky then understood; Steve had brought himself off. Perhaps the flush was a human reaction to embarrassment. 

Bucky decided not to mention it. He pulled some more blankets up and draped them over Steve, already covered in the cloak. Steve glanced over his shoulder and smiled.

“Will you be warm enough like this?” Bucky asked, giving him a pillow for his head.

“Sure,” Steve said, taking it. “Thanks.”

Bucky lay out on his back, but tipped up to watch Steve. Steve tucked the pillow under his head, then curled up under his blankets in a ball. Bucky put a pillow under his head and turned fully onto his back, tucking an arm under his neck. He shut his eyes, content to rest beside Steve.

The sun set gradually. The fire stayed lit and kept the cave warm, but its light was dimmed by the placement of the nest. Steve’s breathing and heartbeat slowed, but Bucky soon noticed that he was shivering.

Bucky merely moved closer and wrapped himself around Steve. He had to place his pillows cleverly to accommodate his antlers, but got comfortable on his side. His body heat seemed to do the trick as Steve’s shivers slowed to a stop. Bucky shifted to make himself more comfortable, then pulled Steve onto his chest so he could lay on his back. Steve stayed asleep and turned into Bucky’s front, his cheek resting in the valley of Bucky’s breasts.

Bucky shut his eyes once again. He fell into a light sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _i had to ask my lil brother about what actually would happen if you drop a human from A Height and had the body belly flop into a literal bog and it was very complicated but essentially listen if you drop the body from enough height to liquefy it the whole thing's gonna liquefy it's gonna be in a million pieces and for Plot Reasons this body needed to be mostly intact so he's less liquefied and more minor neck snappage_
> 
> _yeah anyway see you tomorrow! or maybe not... hehe_


	3. Act I, Scene II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _hello, dears! hope you're excited for more aaaaand this time, with art by Neutralchaos1!!!!_

#  **_Act I, Scene II_ **

Steve became aware of his bed rising and falling. He thought nothing of it, assumed he was on yet another boat, traveling somewhere else around Europe. 

His bed was soft and warm. His pillow was fuzzy under his cheek, like some sort of fur covering. It was soft and fluffy and Steve found himself rubbing against it in his partially conscious state. It was much nicer than the pillows he was used to. Quite firm, too. Steve shifted, turning some, and his cheek pressed against something smooth and warm.

Skin.

Steve woke with a jerk, sitting up so rapidly his head spun. His hands rested on the Horned God’s stomach, fur and skin under his palms. His lower body was tucked between the god’s furry legs and he was – _Fuck,_ Steve was still naked. The Horned God was also pretty much naked; yes, he was covered in fur, but his _dick_ was still poking out of his shaggy hair and tucked between the cloak Steve was still wrapped in and his thigh. Steve could feel the whole shape of it against his stomach. It was the kind of massive that he usually dreamed about four loads in and desperate to be screwed by something other than his hand.

Steve squeaked and tumbled off of the god’s body. _Bucky._ Bucky’s body. Bucky snorted, a bit like a deer, and blinked his eyes open. Steve did the logical thing. He fell onto his other side, yanked the furs blankets over his head, and pretended to be asleep.

A large, rough hand pressed against his bare shoulder. Steve bit his lip, ignoring the sensation of Bucky’s calloused skin and the juxtaposition of his shovel-sized palm and Steve’s slim shoulder. Jesus, last time Steve had woken up, he’d been surprised to find himself broad, but this morning, he’s surprised to be skinny.

“Are you alright, Stevie?” Bucky murmured.

Steve just breathed deeply and hoped that would be convincing.

“I know you’re awake,” Bucky said softly.

Steve let his breath out sharply. Bucky’s hand slid down his shoulder some, cupping his upper arm, and Steve felt very, _very_ naked.

“It’s a little after dawn,” Bucky said then. “Are you hungry?”

Steve bit his lip, then turned onto his back to face Bucky. He was probably beet red, but he turned. His stomach growled just then, so he nodded.

Bucky nodded and moved onto his knees – His knees? He had two joints in his legs like a goat, Steve wasn’t sure which joints were his knees –, then crawled out of the nest. Steve turned to watch and noticed he even had a short tail, which flicked as Bucky crawled from the alcove.

“Jesus,” Steve whispered under his breath. 

He was shacked up with Pan. Cernunnos. The Horned God, whatever the fuck he was called. Steve’s ma had been a dutiful Irish Catholic woman and she’d made sure he knew the names of the old gods, but Steve still wasn’t sure who the fuck Bucky really was.

“Jesus,” Steve whispered again, covering his face with both hands. “I’m dreaming.”

He pinched himself. It hurt.

“Stevie?” Bucky called. “What do you want to eat?”

“Um,” Steve answered, exhaling heavily. “Anything is fine.”

He sighed and turned onto his front. He made sure to hold the cloak around him firmly as he crawled from the nest and stood up. He got a bit of a rush standing, something he hadn't felt since getting the serum. Except… Well… Who knew if super-soldier serums were transferable from one body to a new one made out of moss and mud?

Steve still couldn’t wrap his head around it, so he decided to ignore the fuck out of it. He plopped down in front of the fire and yawned, covering his mouth with a hand.

“I’m going to fetch some mushrooms and vegetables,” Bucky told Steve. “You’re welcome to come along if you wish.”

Steve shrugged. His back was aching, he realized. He hadn't had a backache since the serum, either.

“When you made this body,” Steve said, simply accepting it now, “did you make my spine crooked or straight?”

Bucky paused. “I formed you as what your soul knew to be familiar,” he said.

“Crooked,” Steve grumbled. “Fuck me.”

Bucky stepped around the fire pit and knelt by Steve’s side. Steve’s gaze jerked to the sight of his dick just hanging between his legs and he looked away hastily, face going hot. Bucky touched his back with a hand, then pressed two fingers to the top of his spine.

“What –” Steve started to say.

Bucky ran his fingers down Steve’s back. It felt like something cold trickling down his shirt, following the press of Bucky’s fingers. The pain vanished and Steve sat up on instinct. 

“There,” Bucky said. “Tell me if there are any other discomforts in this body, alright?”

Steve blinked. He reached back and felt his spine, groping for where he knew the curve was, but it was gone.

“What the fuck,” he said.

Bucky stood up. “Your lungs and heart were faulty,” he said. “I already fixed that.”

“Oh,” Steve muttered.

“Any discomfort at all,” Bucky insisted. “Tell me?”

Steve looked up at Bucky, wide-eyed, and nodded. Bucky gave him a soft smile, then bent and touched his cheek with a thick knuckle. Steve felt himself blush again and looked away quickly.

“I’ll be back soon,” Bucky told him. “Don’t go wandering off again, alright? You might end up wandering somewhere you don’t want to be.”

Steve frowned as Bucky started to leave. “Like where?” he called. 

Bucky turned back and smiled at him. “Into a patch of stinging nettle,” he said, then ducked out of the cave.

Steve pulled the cloak tighter. It was still chilly out, so he shuffled closer to the fire. It was still as large as the night before, but Bucky hadn't added fuel to it. Perhaps it was magic, like everything else seemingly was. Steve yawned again, covering his mouth out of habit even though there was no one there. He rested his chin on his knee, hugging it to his chest, and stared into the glowing embers.

The fire warmed his body in a way his blush hadn't. Steve tipped his head to rest his cheek against his knee.

A log cracked and spat sparks into the air. Steve flinched at the sound, though it was soft. 

Quiet.

Barely a sound compared to the roar of a blaze started by bombs, by grenades, by flame launchers.

Steve’s gaze stayed on the embers, but he was thinking about the fires he’d seen across Europe. The homes destroyed in the heartless, mindless rampage of the fascists in Italy and Germany. The bodies. The people. The children, even.

The train.

Bucky's re-entering startled him. Steve looked up and then down at the ground, picking at the skin on the side of his thumb. Bucky was holding a basket that Steve hadn't noticed him taking out, and it was full of various root vegetables and mushrooms.

“Alright, Stevie?” Bucky asked.

Steve glanced up and forced a smile, nodding. Bucky’s brow was furrowed, but he hummed softly and moved further into the cave. Steve watched his back as he dumped the vegetables, washed them at the spring, and cut them up to size. Bucky put a large iron pan amongst the coals, then cut meat and fat from the deer carcass still hanging in the corner.

“How does that not spoil?” Steve asked, pointing.

“It doesn’t,” Bucky said. “I need it to stay fresh, so it does.”

Steve blinked. Bucky seemed to think that was a perfectly logical answer. And since he gave no other reason, magic or otherwise, Steve simply had to accept it. Like everything else.

Bucky dropped the fat into the pan and sat down, his goat legs splayed. His dick was once again just there, in the open, and Steve blushed as he looked away. He was only a man and that dick was a very enticing dick; enticing enough to distract his thoughts of fire and brimstone. Enticing enough that Steve needed to think about other things or he was going to get hard under the cloak.

“So,” Steve said, looking out the cave entrance, “what do you do around here?”

“Do?” Bucky repeated.

“Yeah,” Steve said. “To keep yourself occupied. Not die of boredom.”

Bucky shrugged. “I sleep,” he said. “When there are no mortals invoking me, I am very weary.”

“Oh,” Steve answered. “I – I’m sorry. You should be sleeping…”

Bucky smiled at him, his expression gentle. “No, sweetheart,” he said, and Steve felt the bottom fall out of his lungs and stomach. “Right now I have you, and that gives me energy.”

“Oh,” Steve said again weakly.

Bucky reached back and took the vegetables, in their basket once again, and put it nearby. He pulled a flat rock into his lap and laid out a slab of meat on it, then began cutting it into cubes. Steve licked his lips, his stomach grumbling.

“It’ll only be a minute for this,” Bucky told him.

“You can hear that?” Steve blurted.

Bucky cast him another smile. “Sure,” he said. “And your heartbeat, and your breathing. If you think really hard, I could probably hear that, too.”

Steve flushed, immediately thinking about how he’d just been about to salivate at the sight of Bucky’s dick. Bucky chuckled.

“I’m kidding,” he said. “I can’t hear your thoughts. Those are just for you.”

“Right,” Steve muttered, looking down as his own cock twitched. “Right…”

“Anyway,” Bucky rumbled. “While you’re here, I suppose I will cook for you, make you some tools to fit your hands. Perhaps something to cover yourself so you don’t feel embarrassed.”

Steve pulled the cloak tighter, feeling his face go hot again. Bucky chuckled once more.

“You’ll need shoes and pants,” Bucky added, “modesty aside. You’d cut up your legs and feet if you were to leave the cave like this.”

“Right,” Steve repeated.

“Other than that,” Bucky continued, “I have very few needs. I will be content to care for you.”

Steve glanced up and away again. “You don’t need to do that,” he said. “I can take care of myself. You can rest.”

“Steve,” Bucky said gently.

Steve glanced up, his eyebrows tight together. Bucky thinned his lips, then sighed and tossed the chunks of meat into the hot pan. They sizzled at once, the fat cut from the carcass having melted down. 

“You may be perfectly capable of caring for yourself,” Bucky began.

“I am!” Steve interrupted hotly.

“You are,” Bucky agreed. “You are capable of caring for yourself, but you are also capable of needing rest, as well.”

Steve opened his mouth to argue but Bucky met his gaze, his expression tender, and Steve found the words stolen from his tongue.

“My duty is to care for the earth,” Bucky said gently. “Yet with so few honoring me, I have little energy and, in return, can do very little. I can care for the land and the animals that I have been charged with protecting, but the mortals… They have abandoned my kind.”

Steve inhaled deeply, taking it in.

“Humans war and squabble amongst themselves,” Bucky continued. “They fight and argue over petty matters, they slaughter needlessly. There is little I can do to help them when so few believe I exist. But you are here,” he added, pointing to Steve with a soft smile. “And while you can make it on your own, I can help you. So let me.”

Steve bit his lip. He felt bad at that point.

“I can feed you, at least,” Bucky said, turning to dump the vegetables into the pan. “And keep you warm at night.”

Steve blushed and hid his face in the cloak. Bucky chuckled.

“You were shivering,” he said. “I couldn’t let you freeze.”

“Would’a been fine,” Steve grumbled.

“You would’ve been cold,” Bucky countered. “It was no trouble to hold you.”

Steve glanced up and Bucky was smiling at him again; that fucking sweet smile, the one that made Steve’s stomach swoop and think _again_ about the massive dick between Bucky’s legs and wonder if Bucky would like to do more than feed him and keep him warm. Steve told his thoughts to shut up, that Bucky was just being kind, that all of this could just be a fucking dream and none of it was real, and Bucky kept smiling at him.

Steve didn’t feel that it was right to let Bucky smile at him that way. That he deserved it. Or anything else that Bucky might try to give him. 

What was Steve, to ask for the care and concern of a god?

Steve lifted a thumb to his mouth and bit at his nail. The food hissed in the pan, but the sound was distant to him. He barely noticed.

“Steve,” Bucky called.

Steve jerked his thumb from his mouth, flushing once again; he just hoped Bucky hadn't noticed, but –

“You’ll rip up your thumb if you keep doing that,” Bucky told him. “Bite the backs of your knuckles or suck your thumb if it soothes you to have something in your mouth.”

Steve flushed hotter. “I –” he started, then decided to shut up. He shoved his hands under his knees and aimed his gaze at the embers once more.

“This cooks quickly,” Bucky said then.

Steve nodded. Bucky stirred the mixture of mushrooms, vegetables, and meat with his bare fingers. Steve wondered how he could handle the heat from the proximity of the fire, let alone the contents of the pan. He didn’t ask, because Bucky would probably say something like _I don’t want it to burn_ and expect that to make sense.

Steve pulled his hands from the crooks of his knees and covered his face with them. Everything about Bucky just made his head hurt. He didn’t want to think about it any longer.

“I still don’t have forks,” Bucky commented a minute later with a chuckle. “You’ll have to eat with your hands, or I’ll feed you.”

Steve thought about sitting in Bucky’s lap, taking food from his fingers and licking them clean. He flushed hot again and buried his face in his knees again.

“I’ll eat with my hands,” Steve muttered.

“Suit yourself.”

A second later, Bucky set another of the thick leaves they’d used the night before in front of Steve. There was a small pile of food in the center, steaming and glistening still. Steve touched it with a tentative finger, but it was still a little too hot. Bucky sat down again, this time nearer to Steve, with his own, rather larger portion. He tucked in without hesitation; apparently, his tongue was no more bothered by heat than his hands. Steve gave it a moment longer, then picked up a mushroom and lifted it to his lips. He nibbled on it, then put the whole thing in his mouth. It burst with juice and flavor and Steve groaned impulsively.

Bucky caught his eye and smiled. Steve’s cheeks and ears went hot all over again and he quickly looked away. He made sure to keep silent as he ate the rest of his breakfast.

It was odd to eat so little and not be hungry. Steve finished the small pile of food, which had been barely the size of his fist, and felt totally satisfied. Just a day ago, he’d eaten portions as big as his foot, not his fist, and had them four or five times a day.

It was odd. He hadn't even been used to his body after the serum yet. He’d thought it would just take a while, but it had been two years. And yet. He looked down at his hands to eat, saw the rest of his body, his torso, his knees, and every time he did, it was another jolted reminder that something had happened.

Steve finished eating. He felt restless. He still didn’t know what to believe.

“Buck?” he said softly. “Wait – Can I call you that?”

“Sure,” Bucky answered.

“Can you –” Steve began. “Take me to… to the bog?”

Bucky looked at him carefully. “Why?” he countered in a gentle tone.

“I want to see…” Steve began again. “Myself.”

“You’re right here,” Bucky answered.

“No,” Steve said. “No, I’m – I don’t know where I am. I want to see my body.”

Bucky picked up Steve’s hand. His thin hand, with his long fingers and knobby knuckles. Steve looked at it and could barely recognize it as belonging to him.

“You’re right here,” Bucky said. 

“Yeah, but –”

“No,” Bucky told him softly.

“You can’t say no to something like this!” Steve snapped. “It’s my body, I want to see it!”

“Steve, this is your body,” Bucky answered him, still in that gentle tone; Steve was beginning to hate it. “What you left in the bog isn’t you. It’s just flesh.”

“This is just mud according to you,” Steve countered.

Bucky sighed. He took both of Steve’s hands and held them between his own, then he was suddenly leaning in. Steve jerked, but Bucky pressed their foreheads together. Bucky’s long hair and thick beard swept against Steve’s neck. It tickled.

“The flesh is only flesh,” Bucky murmured. “Feel.”

He pressed Steve’s right hand to his own frail chest. Steve felt his heart thudding.

“That doesn’t mean you’re alive,” Bucky agreed. “You have to trust what you _feel,_ that you’re alive, that this is all real.”

“I’m dead,” Steve whispered.

“No,” Bucky answered. “Stevie. You are alive. You’re more alive than you were when you fell into my bog.”

“No!” Steve snapped, jerking back from Bucky. “I was doing so much good before I landed here, I saved people!”

“And you were miserable,” Bucky insisted. “Your soul was at total odds with itself, you _hated_ yourself.”

Steve sucked in a breath, eyes widening. He shook his head. Bucky took his shoulders and pulled him close again, touching their foreheads together once more.

“I could feel the pain you were in,” Bucky murmured. “Your soul hated where it was, what it was doing.”

“Liar,” Steve snapped. “I was doing _good_ for once in my goddamn miserable life –”

Bucky’s hand cupped his cheek tenderly and Steve ran out of words. He inhaled. Bucky tipped his head to the side, his eyes sad.

“You wanted to die,” Bucky said softly.

“No,” Steve whispered.

_Lying._

Bucky swept his hair from his eyes. “Sweetheart,” he murmured, making Steve inhale and blush again. “I know. You still feel that pain. The guilt. It’s not fair to you. It wasn’t your fault.”

Steve’s breath hitched. He could remember the whistling of the air, the hiss of the train.

“It was,” he whispered. “I was in charge. They – they died ‘cause’a me. ‘Cause I fucked up.”

Bucky shook his head. “No,” he said. “The men running the train set it on fire. They intended to crash the whole thing.”

“You can’t know that,” Steve accused hoarsely.

Bucky shook his head. “You saw it,” he said. “You know it, somewhere in your noble heart.”

“You said you couldn’t read thoughts!” Steve accused.

Bucky smiled at him. “No,” he agreed. “That’s not a thought, Stevie. It’s part of the turmoil in your soul.”

Steve jerked away from Bucky, jumped to his feet, and stormed away. He could still see everything in perfect detail; the Howlies landing on the roof of the train, the explosion, his men falling into the ravine. _All_ of them died. Steve was the only survivor. He should’ve died with them. He should’ve died in the fucking bog –

“Why did you do this?” Steve demanded. “Why didn’t you just let me _die_ for real, why bring me back?”

“I told you,” Bucky said softly, “the pain of your soul –”

“What about the pain my fucking soul’s in now!” Steve screamed at him. “Huh! You think about that, all wise and powerful Horned God? Wouldn’t’ve it’d been better if you just let me fucking die instead of putting me back in this shitty _stick figure_ body and bringing me back to life to scream at you!”

Bucky didn’t look angry, though. He looked sad.

“Come back here, Steve,” Bucky said softly, holding up his hands.

“No!” Steve yelled. “Fuck you and your – your fucking godly powers and your goat legs and your massive dick!”

Bucky raised his eyebrows. Steve realized what he’d said and shut his mouth with a snap, his face flaming hot.

“Come here,” Bucky repeated gently.

Steve, embarrassed, neared again. Bucky moved onto his knees and he was almost Steve’s height. He took Steve’s hands and squeezed them.

“I can’t bear letting anyone end their days in my bog or my wood in pain,” Bucky said softly. “I still feel those who died in misery. They linger.”

Steve bit his lip, hesitant. 

“You can scream at me now,” Bucky continued, “maybe for a few days, a few years. But they scream for eternity.”

Steve glanced down. He let out his breath and picked up Bucky’s hands properly, though they looked like a child’s in his.

“What about my men?” he asked. “Can you feel them?”

Bucky let out his breath. “They died in the mountains,” he said. “My lands are the peat bogs and woods with stags.”

Steve exhaled again. He nodded.

“Who –” he started, then laughed coldly. “Jesus, here I am about to ask who the fuck has the mountains.”

Bucky grimaced. “I cannot remember,” he admitted. “Whoever it was, they’ve been asleep so long… They may never wake again.”

Steve exhaled. He didn’t know what to do. Rage and scream still, insist he was really dead, demand if he was in hell or purgatory because he sure as fuck didn’t get into heaven.

Accept that he was holding hands with the Horned God, who had formed him a new body out of peat and moss and mud.

Bucky reached up and cupped Steve’s cheek again. “I know you’re still in pain,” he said gently. “I wish I could take it from you. But that pain… It’s deep in you somewhere I can’t touch.”

Steve nodded, clenching his jaw. He felt old all of a sudden. He was barely 26 years old. He’d lost one body, then died and gotten it back.

“I will do my best,” Bucky added. “To help you.”

Steve inhaled sharply and nodded again. He stepped back, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. Bucky rose to his feet – his hooves, really, and gripped Steve’s shoulder.

“To contain all that emotion inside you and keep it inside is dangerous,” he said. “It will condense and heat and boil over and one day explode from you.”

Steve let out another cold laugh. “Jesus, Buck,” he said. “Ain’t you ever met an Irishman before?”

Bucky smiled gently. “Well,” he said. “Perhaps I have not known many in a very long time. The men that worshipped me long ago would kiss their brothers-in-arms openly at weddings and funerals and battles.”

Steve glanced up and away again. “Well,” he muttered. “Shit like that’s… That ain’t done no more, Buck. For a bunch’a reasons.”

Bucky frowned. “Why wouldn’t it be done?” he asked.

Steve blew out his breath and shrugged. “Just – he started. “Y’know – We ain’t that open with affection no more.”

Bucky looked confused. Steve looked away and hugged himself, breathing deep. Bucky then turned him by his shoulders and touched his cheek. Steve glanced up, startled.

“Will you let me help?” Bucky asked. 

Steve glanced down, biting his lip. Bucky’s hand moved to his chin and lifted it. 

“Please, Steve,” he said softly.

“I’ll think about it,” Steve muttered, just to get Bucky off his back.

Bucky sighed. Steve pulled away and took a seat by the fire. He did his best to radiate _Don’t talk to me_ energy and set his gaze stubbornly on the fire, dwelling on what the train had looked like engulfed in flames.

Bucky picked up on his angry aura. He didn’t ask Steve to speak again. Steve felt bitter, but told himself it was for the best. The less he talked, the less he risked exposing of himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _HOLY SHIT CHAOS'S ART!!! this is literally the 3rd big bang i've done with them and they pull out the stops every fucking time i love them so much_
> 
> _that's it for today, babes, i'll see you tomorrow! ;) probably_


	4. Act I, Scene III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _good evening, my dears, i bring you MORE feels_

#  **_Act I, Scene III_ **

Bucky wasn’t aware of the passage of time in the way that humans were, he knew that. A day and a year felt the same in hindsight once one had lived longer than the existence of most species. Steve was so young, young and full of potential.

Bucky felt sad at the prospect of Steve leaving him. But it would be best for him. Humans were not suited to life in solitude, not the way Bucky’s kind was.

The second day with Steve, Bucky felt none of the weariness that came with consciousness. He easily stayed awake and alert all day long, happy to sit in the sunshine outside his cave with Steve and shape bowls and utensils from clay for him. 

Steve found the clay fascinating. Bucky thought it was sweet, watching him take a lump of clay and mold it in his hands. While Bucky fashioned tools, Steve worked the clay until he was holding the figure of a small man.

“Do you wish it to live?” Bucky asked him.

“No,” Steve said, using the tip of a nail to carve tiny features into the man’s face. “That’s not the point of these. It’s art.”

Bucky tipped his head to the side. “Curious,” he murmured. “What function does it have?”

Steve placed the clay man on the ground in front of him, adjusting its ankles. He looked at it with sad eyes.

“To remember,” he said. “This is Dum Dum.”

Bucky frowned.

“Sergeant Tim Dugan,” Steve added. “He was my second-in-command.”

Bucky nodded slowly. He shifted to sit closer to Steve’s side and looked at the clay face. Bucky could not say what Sergeant Tim Dugan had looked like in life, but the clay man was charming. His chin was smooth, but he had a very thick mustache. Bucky touched his upper lip and the hairs he kept short with the help of a very sharp knife. 

“What would the purpose of such facial hair be?” he asked, brushing a hand down his beard.

“To piss off my see-oh,” Steve answered with a smile. “You’re supposed to be clean-shaven in the Army. But the Howlies are a special unit, we rarely have time to shave.”

His smile dropped. “Was,” he corrected himself. “Rarely had.”

“What is a see-oh?” Bucky asked.

“Commanding officer,” Steve replied. “I was in charge of the Howlies, but I still had men above me.”

Bucky nodded, though he still didn’t fully understand. Humans were very independent, he’d thought, they disliked authority.

Steve picked up another lump of clay from Bucky’s pile. He began to shape it again, much like the figure of Sergeant Tim Dugan.

Bucky let him do it and didn’t question it. He finished a few plates and bowls and picked them up to take to the fire in the cave. He looked hesitantly at the figurine Steve had already finished.

“Would you like to bake that?” he asked gently.

Steve looked at it. Then he nodded stiffly.

Bucky picked it up gently. He stepped into the cave and placed a few long, flat rocks against each other to form an oven of sorts. He set another flat rock on the bottom and placed the clay items inside, then closed it up with one last rock and piled coals around it. He blew gently on the coals and they grew in heat, strong enough to bake the clay.

He stepped outside again. Steve was carving details into his second figurine.

Bucky sat just behind Steve in order to look over his shoulder. Steve didn’t look up.

“Who is this?” Bucky asked softly.

“Pinky,” Steve answered just as softly.

Bucky watched him carving the figure. Then he took another lump of clay himself and began fashioning new tools.

He first made a wide, flat paddle, one Steve could use to smooth his sculptures broadly. He made another similar, but with a much narrower surface, for tighter corners. Then a skewer, a hook, and a narrow knife for fine details. Bucky took them back to the fire and placed them in the oven. He washed his hands in the spring’s pool, then took his place just behind Steve once more.

Steve finished Pinky just as the sun was setting. Bucky picked it up with gentle hands and took it to the oven. Steve wandered inside behind him, hugging himself in the borrowed cloak.

“There’s some food left from this afternoon,” Bucky told Steve. “Would you like that or something fresh?”

“Leftover’s fine,” Steve mumbled. “Thanks.”

Bucky nodded. He set his pan into the coals once more and dumped the leftover food into it to heat it.

Steve dragged the stump of a log to the fire pit and sat on it. Bucky sat on a cushion on the ground and stirred the contents of the pan with his fingers occasionally. Steve drew his legs onto the stump with him, hugged them to his chest, and rested his chin on his knees. He stared at the fire, his face weary beyond his youth.

Bucky didn’t know how to help Steve. He could care for him, see he grew strong in his new body, but the hurt in his heart. Bucky couldn’t heal that.

It struck him then that that was upsetting. Bucky sighed to himself and kept his attention on the pan of food. 

Steve was not the first human he had given new life to. Not the first he had sheltered. Given the patterns of humans, Steve would certainly not be the last to land in one of Bucky’s bogs, so he would not be the last Bucky would bring in from the cold waters. After a changing of the moon, perhaps two, Steve would be ready to venture out of the forest again. Bucky would see him off and return to his cave, to settle into his bed to sleep until he was called once more.

Steve shivered in the corner of Bucky’s vision, then pulled the cloak around his legs and tucked it under his feet. Bucky looked into a corner of the cave where he kept spare leather, then got up and fetched one, a knife, some thread, and a needle.

“Let me see your foot,” Bucky asked.

Steve glanced up. He turned on the stump and stuck his leg out. Bucky measured the leather against his foot, then marked it with an indent by his thumbnail in the places it would need to be cut and sewn. He pulled it back into his lap and began to trim it to size.

“Thank you,” Steve said quietly.

Bucky nodded absently. He made quick work of the first slipper and was nearly done with it by the time the food seemed hot enough. Bucky put it aside and served Steve a leaf of the food, then himself.

“Cheers,” Steve murmured.

Bucky glanced up, confused, but shrugged and accepted it. 

They ate in quiet. Steve didn’t finish his portion, but put it aside. Bucky decided not to comment. When he was finished, he picked up the leather and tools once more to resume. He copied the first slipper instead of measuring Steve’s feet again. 

Steve didn’t seem to notice what he was doing, because when Bucky held the slippers out to him, he was surprised.

“Oh,” he said. “Thank you.”

Bucky nodded. Steve pulled the simple leather shoes onto his feet and tied them shut with the thongs Bucky had attached. Steve extended his legs to the ground again, tapping his toes.

“Thanks,” Steve repeated.

“Of course,” Bucky answered. “You were cold.”

“I would’ve been fine,” Steve mumbled.

Bucky smiled at that. He reached over and gripped Steve’s shoulder, giving him a gentle shake.

“You would’ve been cold,” he insisted. “There’s nothing more to it.”

Steve glanced up at him, then smiled absently. He nodded and looked back to the fire. He didn’t say anything else.

The silence stretched, and after a moment, Bucky decided it could stand to be broken. He fetched a pan flute and sat down by the fire once more, then raised it to his lips and began to play.

Steve glanced up as Bucky started a soft melody. He watched Bucky instead of the fire after that, and Bucky began tapping his hoof against the stone to match the tempo of his melody. Steve’s lips curled in a smile and Bucky copied it a little as he continued to play. Steve began tapping his feet again, his head tipping in time with Bucky’s flute.

“The Greeks had a horned god of the wild they called Pan,” Steve commented. “He played a flute like that. Was… Was that you?”

Bucky shrugged, lowering the flute. “I’m not sure where the Greeks lived,” he said. “My lands stretch across these islands and the continent to the east, but the warmer it gets, the less bogs there are.”

“I suppose,” Steve murmured. “Greece is on the continent, but to the south.”

“I don’t wander far south,” Bucky agreed.

Steve nodded. “Still,” he murmured. “Maybe there was someone like you.”

Bucky nodded as well. “Perhaps,” he agreed gently. “I cannot remember what any of my kind looked like. Not anymore.”

“Why?” Steve asked.

Bucky shrugged. “They fell asleep,” he said. “A very long time ago. I haven’t seen any of them in a few of your centuries, I would say.”

Steve’s lips turned in a frown. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess… I guess that might’ve been the Church. The Catholic church, I mean. They sort of… They converted a lot of other cultures from their original religions to Christianity.”

Bucky tipped his head to the side. “What do you mean by _convert?_ ”

Steve sighed. “I never really thought about it,” he answered. “I guess that’s just a nice way of saying… Put a stop to paganism and made Christianity the norm.”

“I see,” Bucky replied with a frown.

“My ma told me old stories from Ireland,” Steve added. “But she told them like they were just… Fairytales. Not true. We’re – We were Catholic. Went to Mass, worshiped Jesus and the one, true God…”

“I still do not know who Jesus is,” Bucky answered.

“He’s the son of God,” Steve said. “God sent him to Earth to die for humanity’s sins.”

“Die?” Bucky repeated. “That seems… A little harsh, perhaps.”

Steve shrugged. “I never thought about it,” he admitted. “Sin is – It means that once a human dies, they’re doomed to hell. But after Christ died for us, he paid the price of our sins. So the saved go to heaven, or they spend time in purgatory and then go to heaven. Everybody sins.”  
  


Steve glanced down at his lap, then drew his legs up under the cloak again. “Nobody’s perfect,” he muttered. “‘S why Jesus had to die. ‘Cause he never sinned.”

Bucky thinned his lips, thinking carefully. He put his flute down and leaned his elbows on his knees, watching Steve carefully.

“This concept of sin,” he began, “is odd to me. You asked if you were in Tír na nÓg yesterday. That, I know of. But this heaven, hell, purgatory. It’s unfamiliar to me.”

Steve nodded, his lips drawn into a heavy frown. “‘Course it is,” he mumbled.

“As far as I know,” Bucky continued gently, “the souls of humans pass to Tír na nÓg after death. I’ve never been there. I don’t know what happens to humans once they reach the afterlife.”

“Could go to heaven or hell,” Steve mumbled.

“Perhaps,” Bucky agreed. “What is the difference?”

“Hell is a lake of eternal fire,” Steve answered flatly. “Where sinners can suffer for the rest of eternity.”

“I see,” Bucky said. “What must humans do to earn such a fate?”

“Any sin,” Steve said. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. A lie, a murder, a desertion. It’s all imperfection.”

Bucky thinned his lips. “I see,” he said gently. 

Steve clenched his jaw, staring into the embers still. “Perversions,” he said quietly. “That’ll send you to hell.”

“This is all news to me,” Bucky told Steve.

Steve laughed then. He shrugged, sitting up on his stump, and shook his head.

“The whole premise of the Bible hinges on your non-existence,” Steve said. “That, or you’re the Devil himself and – And I’ve definitely doomed myself to eternal damnation by staying with you.”

Bucky thinned his lips. “I’ve never considered myself a devil,” he admitted.

Steve shrugged. “I don’t know if I believe it anymore. Which also earns me damnation.”

“It seems a very strict system,” Bucky commented. “Especially considering how flawed humans are by nature.”

Steve nodded. “That’s the point,” he said. “Humans are born sinners. We must strive to act as Jesus did to uphold our beliefs.”

“But one wrong move dooms you?” Bucky asked. “That seems unfair.”

“Life’s not fair,” Steve muttered. “No, we can earn forgiveness. When we sin, we – Catholics, at least, we go to confession. Tell our priest what we did, and then he’ll tell us what penance we have to do to make up for it and we earn absolution.”

“Still,” Bucky murmured. “This system seems very rigged against you.”

Steve shrugged. “‘S our fault,” he said. “Mea culpa…”

Bucky didn’t recognize those words, but Steve seemed overwhelmed, so he didn’t ask. He picked up his flute again and played once again.

“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” Steve said quietly. “Everything seems – Everything I’ve seen. Everything you’ve done…”

Bucky let him think and continued to play. Steve exhaled.

“Whatever,” he said quietly. “I won’t bore you with the details. It doesn’t matter.”

Bucky stopped playing. Steve didn’t seem to notice. 

Bucky got up and moved closer. He crouched by Steve’s side and cupped his chin, turning his face. Steve seemed startled by Bucky’s touch, his eyes widening.

“You’re upset,” Bucky said. “That does matter.”

Steve opened his mouth, then shut it. His face went pink once again.

“Would it help to confess?” Bucky asked, bringing back Steve’s own words. “I’m not sure who qualifies as a priest, but at least you could get it off your chest.”

“It’s fine,” Steve insisted.

Bucky raised his eyebrows. “I think I can tell it’s not,” he said gently.

Steve pulled his face from Bucky’s grip and looked away. Bucky touched his shoulder instead.

“I can’t tell you if your Jesus and your God exist or not,” he said. “I don’t remember my birth, who was there, if this world existed by then. I suppose it’s possible that there is some being more powerful than I that created me. I know my forests, my bogs. I can show you those places or the pool where my kind used to meet. Beyond that, I cannot answer your questions about life after death or eternal damnation.”

“‘Course not,” Steve muttered.

“I will admit what you’ve told me seems unfair,” Bucky added. “You’re a good man, Steve. I know that. I don’t believe you would’ve been damned to eternal suffering if you had died.”

“If you hadn't brought me back,” Steve corrected him a bit sharply. “I did die. You brought me back to life.”

Bucky shrugged. “Either way,” he said gently, “you would not have been damned.”

“You don’t know that,” Steve snapped. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“I know you’re a good man,” Bucky repeated. “Surely that’s enough?”

“No,” Steve laughed coldly. “Fuck no. Shit,” he added, covering his eyes with a hand. “That there. There’s a reason I’d go to hell. I’ve got filthy language. The tongue is sinful.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows. “That seems wildly excessive,” he said.

“No, it’s a sin,” Steve snapped. “Like a thousand other things I’ve done, that I’ve failed to overcome. I’m a _perverted_ man, not a good one.”

Bucky gripped Steve’s shoulder again. “You said yourself, you’re not sure it’s real anymore,” he said carefully. “Upsetting yourself like this over it now will do you no good. You’re not dead.”

“I’m doubting, that’s a sin,” Steve muttered.

Bucky exhaled. “What’s not a sin?” he asked.

Steve hesitated. He put his hands in his lap, looking at the fire. He shrugged, then laughed.

“I don’t know anymore,” he said. “I don’t – I don’t know.”

Bucky lifted his eyebrows. “Then stop fussing about it,” he said. “Come. Let’s sleep.”

Steve bit his lip, looking at his lap. “Alright,” he muttered.

Bucky rose. He kept a hand on Steve’s shoulder until he stood up, too. Steve was so small, he barely came up to Bucky’s waist. It was easy to leave his hand on Steve’s shoulder nearing the nest, easy to touch his back in a guiding way as Steve bent to climb into the bed. Bucky knelt and lay down with his hooves at the entrance. He pulled pillows and furs nearer, creating a comfortable space for Steve at his side.

Steve knelt on the other side of the nest, as if to lay there.

“Sleep by me,” Bucky told him. “You were cold last night.”

“I have the shoes now,” Steve said, wrapping more furs around him. “Thanks, though. I’ll be fine.”

Bucky huffed. Steve seemed to think that anything beyond not dead was fine. He moved onto his knees, then shuffled over to Steve as he was lying down with his back to Bucky, and he scooped Steve up easily.

“Hey!” Steve shouted. “What the fuck d’you think you’re doin’!”

“It seems you’re incapable of determining what is actually fine,” Bucky said, placing Steve in the bed he’d prepared for him. “You’ll sleep by me where you’ll be warm.”

“I said I’d be fine!” Steve snapped.

“And I just told you your judgment is clouded,” Bucky countered. “It’s no trouble to keep you warm, Stevie.”

Bucky lay down again, wrapping an arm around Steve and tucking him close to his side, then covered the both of them in a large blanket. Steve shifted to put his back to Bucky, then exhaled sharply and started to get up. Bucky put a hand on his middle and held him in place.

“Let me go!” Steve snapped at him. “I don’t want to sleep next to you!”

Bucky was not bothered. “You’ll be cold otherwise,” he said. “You could fall ill. Just go to sleep.”

“Bucky,” Steve exhaled wearily.

“Is it one of your sins to be warm at night?” Bucky questioned, beginning to grow annoyed with this Catholic attitude. “If so, I will tell you now, that’s complete bullshit.”

“The sin is your fucking dick hanging out!” Steve answered angrily.

He then immediately sucked in a breath as if he hadn't meant to say that. Bucky blinked but chuckled.

“Alright, little one,” he said. “I shall cover myself, will that allow you to sleep by my side without guilt?”

Steve hissed a breath out through his teeth. He sat up rapidly, covering his face with both hands. Bucky sat up as well, somewhat confused.

“Steve,” Bucky murmured. “You really could grow ill if you allow yourself to be too cold. Your body is still weak –”

“My body’s always been weak,” Steve snapped.

“I don’t think my body is truly what concerns you,” Bucky said gently. “Tell me.”

Steve refused to look at him. He exhaled, then grabbed a blanket and a pillow and got up.

“I’ll sleep by the fire,” he said. “I’ll be warm there. Will that make you happy?”

Bucky frowned. “You won’t be comfortable,” he said, but Steve was already climbing from the alcove. “Steve!”

“Just leave it alone!” Steve called over his shoulder.

Bucky leaned on his knees, quite confused. He watched Steve put the pillow and blanket down by the fire, then curl up under the cloak. He exhaled. This _sin_ business was truly upsetting Steve. He didn’t understand it, nor did he understand what sort of asceticism required one to sleep on a hard floor this way.

Bucky had a small covering for his groin, as Steve had not been the first to be bothered by his cock standing out from his fur. He fetched it and tied it around his waist, then returned to his nest and waited, watching Steve.

Steve, as he suspected, shivered in his sleep. Bucky wasn’t sure how he could fall asleep so cold. He got up and lifted him gently. In his sleep, Steve was much less self-deprecating, as he curled into Bucky’s hold and relaxed the heavy frown that had curved his lips in his sleep.

Bucky placed Steve in the bed he’d prepared and curled around him once again. Steve’s cold skin warmed to his touch soon enough. Steve shifted, though not waking, and pressed his hand against Bucky’s breast, just over his heart. Bucky tucked his nose into Steve’s hair and breathed him in deeply.

Perhaps it would be harder to let Steve go in a few months this way. But he was so thin and frail. Bucky couldn’t stand to see him shiver.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _i was talking to friends including lexi on discord voice chat and someone said something about good and bad kinds of angst, and i asked "is there really good angst?" and the answer is no so all of y'all enjoying the angst parts, who hurt you?_
> 
> _check out where chaos shared last chapter's art on twitter[here](https://twitter.com/Neutralchaos1/status/1335027600746401792?s=20)! they'll be posting this chapter's art to twitter as well. see you tomorrow! maybe..._


	5. Act I, Scene IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _aha! i did skip a day! that's to keep you on your toes! but to be clear, all chapters will be posted between now and the 18th, so don't worry too much. this one is short and steve is still in his feels. enjoy!_

#  **_Act I, Scene IV_ **

  
  


Steve woke to radiated warmth and a gentle hand brushing through his hair. It felt so nice. He burrowed closer to the body next to his, not wanting to wake up. He knew, in the back of his head, that when he woke up, he would realize where he was, with _whom_ he was, and then the guilt would set in. He didn’t want to feel that.

Whoever it was continued to pet his hair. Steve pressed his knee against his partner’s thighs.

He felt thick fur against his knee, and that – That woke him up properly.

Steve jolted, consciousness bringing him awareness and realization. Bucky tightened his arms around Steve, his hand leaving his hair to touch the back of his neck. 

“Careful,” he murmured, “you’ll knee me in the balls.”

Steve yanked away from Bucky, tumbling out of his grip. Bucky blinked at him, looking like he’d just woken himself. Steve scrambled across the nest, panting, and Bucky sat up with a frown.

“I went to sleep by the fire,” Steve began.

“You weren’t warm enough,” Bucky answered. “I saw you shivering and your skin was cold.”

“I told you I would be fine!” Steve snapped at him.

Bucky sat up, his frown growing. “Steve,” he replied in a gentle tone. “Whatever’s bothering you. Tell me.”

Steve looked away quickly, biting his tongue. He shook his head.

Bucky crawled over to him and sat by him. Steve shoved up and strode out of the nest, belatedly wrapping the cloak around his torso to protect his modesty.

“Steve,” Bucky called behind him.

“Leave me alone,” Steve snapped.

He heard Bucky get up, his hooves thud against the stone floor, then his hands fell on Steve’s shoulder, steadying and warm. Steve almost pressed into them, then managed to jerk away. But Bucky caught him and pulled him back.

“Steve,” Bucky repeated. “Tell me.”

Steve covered his face with his hands, his breath hitching. “Just –” he started. “Just leave it? I’m fine.”

Bucky turned him around by his shoulders. Steve’s new leather shoes scuffed the floor as he didn’t pick his feet up properly. Bucky cupped his chin once again and Steve was still for a moment, letting him, before pulling away. Bucky sighed.

“Steve,” Bucky said a third time, “whatever’s bothering you, it’s unnecessary. Catching a cold because something Catholic prevents you from sleeping in a warm place is ridiculous –”

“It’s not that!” Steve hissed. “I – You’ll be angry. I can’t help it. I’ve _tried_ –”

“What would make me angry?” Bucky questioned with a frown. “Sweetheart, you’ve done nothing worthy of irritation –”

Steve jerked away. “Can you leave it?” he asked. “It’s fine.”

Bucky let out a low rumble. Steve was startled by how animalistic it was; not quite a growl, almost like a purr, but wearier. Bucky neared him again and then his hands tucked under Steve’s arms and he lifted him like he was a child.

“Put me down!” Steve gasped.

Bucky did not. Instead, he tucked Steve against his chest and touched their foreheads together. Steve sucked in a breath. This close, he could smell Bucky. He smelled warm and inviting and masculine. It made parts of his head go soft, others rise in defense and guilt.

“Why must you fight me so?” Bucky murmured to him. “What good does it do you to deny yourself simple comforts?”

"Look, it's complicated," Steve sighed.

"Tell me," Bucky asked. "Please. If you can share whatever is upsetting you, perhaps I can relieve your burdens in some way."

Steve shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "I try really hard to ignore it, I just – You're just – And you're –! Gah!”

Steve yanked away from Bucky, feeling disgusting as he tumbled out of his arms to the floor again. He grabbed his hair, pulling hard to steady himself. But then Bucky caught him and picked him up again. He pressed Steve against his chest and carded a hand through his hair.

"Don't hurt yourself, little one," Bucky murmured. "I worked hard to create your sweet head, it would be a shame to pull all your hair out over something you can't even say aloud."

Steve just covered his face, trying to catch his breath. Bucky cupped Steve's forearm, covering almost all of it with his large hand, and eased Steve's hand from his face.

"Whatever it is, I'm sure it's something your Catholic attitudes insist on that really isn't an issue," Bucky said.

Steve laughed coldly. "My Catholic attitudes," he repeated. "Bull –” he started, then stopped with a sigh. "No," he said. "I'm sorry."

"What for?" Bucky prompted. "Stevie, you've done nothing but be angry with yourself since your arrival. Why must you hurt yourself this way?"

Steve shook his head again. He was much too close to Bucky like this, if he said it, Bucky's anger and horror with him might earn him a fat black eye, or maybe even worse.

Bucky hummed. "Is it my nudity? I have covered myself, Steve, it is not an issue to me."

"No," Steve muttered. "Well, kinda."

“Steve,” Bucky said gently. “Talk to me.”

Steve shook his head jerkily. He couldn’t admit it. Bucky would throw him out, and he – he was worried that leaving Bucky’s woods would take something from him. His newfound life, maybe. Or something worse. The tenderness that Bucky looked at him with.

Though, it might do Steve good to lose that. His foolish, sinful desires were soft for Bucky’s kind smile.

“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me,” Bucky said gently.

“You couldn’t help if I did!” Steve snapped. “Let it go, will you? It’s not a big deal.”

Bucky set his jaw. He cupped Steve’s chin again; gently, ever so gently. Steve wilted a little.

“If you promise to stop denying yourself,” Bucky told him. “You’ll sleep by me where you’ll be warm. You’ll eat enough food to not be hungry. Whatever else you’ve been refusing yourself out of some twisted _guilt,_ you’ll stop? Do you promise?”

Steve bit his lip, looking down.

“Promise me,” Bucky insisted.

“Fine,” Steve snapped, if only to get Bucky to release him.

Bucky nodded then. He let go of Steve’s chin and instead touched his cheek.

“Good,” he said. 

Steve kept his gaze on the ground. Bucky let him. He turned away and went to the fire, taking apart the small oven of rocks he’d built for the clay works the day before. Steve neared, curious, and found his models of Dum Dum and Pinky a little shrunken, but almost perfect likenesses. His heart twisted. He would make figures of all the Howlies. He owed them.

“These’ll need to cool before you use them,” Bucky said of the tools and plates as he put them aside. “If the texture bothers you, I can seal them in a glaze.”

Steve nodded absently. Bucky glanced at him, then nodded as well and went to fetch the large cooking pan.

Bucky cooked something. Steve ate it and hardly tasted it. He avoided Bucky’s gaze. There was still a wet lump of clay by the spring pool. Steve picked some of it and began shaping it with Happy Sam in mind.

Bucky saw him, then picked up some of the tools he’d made the day before and put them by Steve’s knee. Small sculpting tools. 

Steve picked them up with a grateful nod. Bucky sat down facing him, his thick legs spread out and fur pooling on the stone floor. The thin cloth he wore around his waist just barely covered his groin and the bulge of his dick was still visible.

Steve forced himself to focus on the clay. He refused to think any more about Bucky. He refused to let his thoughts go down that path, ashamed as he was of his wants. 

He did need to confess, Bucky had been right. Steve finished Happy Sam’s face, then stared at it in sorrow. He confessed in silence to the clay. _Perverted thoughts, doubts, foul language, taking the Lord’s name in vain._ Steve put the little sculpture aside and picked up more clay.

Bucky picked up his flute eventually and began to play again. Steve hardly heard it. Occasionally, he looked up and caught sight of Bucky’s lips pursed just so to play the pan flute and he had to look away in shame.

At noon, the light in the cave was too low and Steve moved to sit in the entrance. Bucky brought him food and sat in front of him as if to make sure he actually ate it. Steve did, he was hungry. The portion was still too large.

“Can you finish it?” Bucky asked.

Steve shook his head guiltily. Bucky took the clay plate from him without scolding.

Steve finished the clay figure of Happy Sam and started on Gabe. He kept working and Bucky resumed playing his flute. The sun set just as he finished, leaving Steve without the light needed to continue. 

“Would you like something different to eat tonight?” Bucky asked him.

Steve just shrugged. “Anything is fine,” he said.

Bucky hummed softly. He got up and brushed his hand against Steve’s shoulder as he stepped into the cave. Steve put down the clay figure and leaned against the rock wall behind him, just looking at Gabe’s face.

It wasn’t quite perfect. Steve couldn’t get the eyes right.

“I’m going to get some new mushrooms,” Bucky said, nearing Steve again. “Would you like to come with me?”

Steve shrugged. He got up.

Bucky put the two figurines in the makeshift oven and banked the coals around it. Steve set Pinky and Dum Dum to watch over Gabe and Happy Sam. Bucky then gave Steve a small knife, a little brush, and a basket.

“Don’t touch any mushrooms until you show me what it is,” Bucky told him. “Some are toxic.”

Steve nodded. Bucky bowed his head to leave the cave, then outside, paused, his face lifted to the sky. Steve watched his tail twitch as his nostrils flared, then he started to walk east. Steve followed, stride as long as he could make it to keep up with Bucky’s much longer legs.

They foraged mushrooms and other roots. Bucky put everything in the basket Steve carried, though Steve didn’t find much of anything himself. The fungi and vegetables were all camouflaged well with the forest and he wasn’t used to seeking such things out.

As dusk fell, Bucky led Steve back to the clearing. It was getting cold, so Steve was grateful. He sat down by the fire, across from where the clay figurines of Dum Dum and Pinky were perched on the rock wall of the pit, and bundled up in his cloak.

Bucky abruptly dropped another blanket around his shoulders. Steve glanced up and forced a smile, pulling it snugly around him.

Bucky cooked the mushrooms and vegetables with more venison. Steve ate it, and again, hardly tasted it. He couldn’t finish half of the portion Bucky gave him.

“Are you feeling well?” Bucky asked him.

“‘Course,” Steve answered, putting his plate aside. “I’m just not that hungry.”

His stomach rumbled. Bucky frowned at him.

“Please finish it,” he said. “You need your strength.”

Steve glared at his torso, then sighed. He took the plate back and nibbled on his meal until it was gone.

He was tired. Bucky put a guiding hand on the small of his back as he climbed into the nest and Steve just collapsed in the middle. Bucky lay down beside him and curled around him. He lay mostly on his back, likely to accommodate his antlers, but his arms were still snug around Steve. His thighs pressed against Steve’s legs, warmth radiating from under his fur.

Steve fell asleep without protest. He dreamed, unfortunately. It was a jumbled mess of fear; the train and the Valkyrie and Bucky’s eyes turning red as he cast Steve into the lake of fire. He slept fitfully.

He woke, lying on Bucky’s chest, cheek cushioned on his pectoral muscle. Bucky had just moved him, it seemed. Steve fell asleep again before he could really worry about it. 

Then, adding insult to injury, he slept better braced on Bucky’s chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _the feels will be over soon i promise. well, the angsty feels. i mean, these angst feels. y'all know what i mean. see you tomorrow!_


	6. Act I, Scene V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _guess what. act 2 starts next chapter. you're welcome._

#  **_Act I, Scene V_ **

  
  
  


Steve counted the days by which of the Howlies he managed to replicate in clay. In the first two days, he finished Dum Dum, Happy Sam, Pinky, and Gabe. They were lined up by the cave entrance, and over the next three days, he added Monty, Morita, Junior, and Dernier.

Bucky no longer asked him to unpack his emotions. He asked Steve if he was hungry, or thirsty, if he was ready to put a finished figurine in the small oven. After three days, he had given Steve a pair of fur pants to go with his shoes. He still insisted Steve sleep by his side. He left Steve alone otherwise.

Steve realized eventually that he missed the conversation. When he had nothing left to do with himself.

There was still clay unshaped, wet and unformed. Steve took more of it in his hands and began forming it once more. Not into one of his men. He made his mother. Then Peggy.

“Who are they?” Bucky asked him softly.

“My ma,” Steve said gently. “My… my girl…”

Bucky put the two clay figurines into the makeshift oven and banked the coals around it. Steve washed his hands in the spring.

“Ma, that is mother, yes?” Bucky asked. “The girl is… your daughter?”

“No,” Steve answered quickly, scowling at the unintended implication. “No, she was my – My _girl._ ”

Bucky lifted his eyebrows.

“The woman I was gonna marry,” Steve rephrased with a sigh. “Well, I guess I would’a…”

Bucky sat down next to him. “It doesn’t seem to me that you loved her,” he said gently.

“I loved her,” Steve snapped. “I – I tried, at least. It’s not of your business!” he added sharply.

Bucky shrugged. He moved to stare ahead and didn’t bring it back up.

Steve exhaled. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Shouldn’t’a snapped at ya… I just… She was the only woman who seemed to like me when I was still…”

He gestured to himself. “This way,” he muttered.

Bucky hummed softly.

“An’ she weren’t like most other women,” Steve added, resting his chin on his knee. “She knew her own goods, didn’t need me t’a fluff it up for her.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Bucky answered.

“I dunno,” Steve muttered. “Most other women I tried to court didn’t care for a runt like me an’ once I was more like a man, they didn’t really seem to care about me.”

“What about your form now is less of a man?” Bucky asked.

Steve glanced up, frowning. “I –” he started.

Bucky lifted his eyebrows again. Steve found himself at a loss for words.

“I don’ know,” Steve murmured. “I just… Always felt like a burden like this…”

“That makes you less worthy?” Bucky answered. “What is wrong with needing care? Everyone needs to be cared for.”

“No, but a man’s gotta be able to support a family,” Steve insisted. “Keep food on the table, roof over their heads.”

“Must it be a man who does that?” Bucky countered. “Does not a woman have the same abilities?”

“Yeah,” Steve said quickly, “‘course she would.”

“What, then, would require you to be responsible for food and shelter?” Bucky asked. “When you were sick frequently, in pain so much? Why would you not be permitted to rest?”

“‘Cause,” Steve muttered. “I – ‘Cause, ‘s wha’ every man’s gotta do.”

“We just established a woman could be responsible,” Bucky prompted gently. “Could you not even take shelter with another man?”

“No!” Steve said quickly. “I mean, I had roommates, but I had t’a pull my own weight!”

“Despite being weaker and sicker?” Bucky asked.

“Especially!” Steve snapped. 

Bucky tipped his head to the side. “That seems tiresome, Stevie,” he said gently. 

“Yeah,” Steve muttered, looking down. “Well. It didn’t matter. Don’t. I got the serum an’ I was plenty fit t’a be the breadwinner. Could’a settled down with Pegs, had a family, the dream…”

Bucky lifted his eyebrows, humming. “How excited you seem at the prospect,” he replied dryly.

“Every man wants a wife an’ family!” Steve snapped.

“Well, obviously,” Bucky answered, rolling his eyes, “and such a generalizing statement makes perfect sense for the entire male population of your race. What about the women? Or the in-betweeners?”

“What?” Steve replied, confused.

“Or the men and women who prefer their own gender?” Bucky added gently.

Steve’s heart skipped a beat.

“Shut up,” he snapped, jumping to his feet. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! I ain’t like that!”

“I never said you were,” Bucky replied calmly. “Though, it very much appears you have.”

“I loved Peggy, a woman!” Steve abruptly shouted at him.

Bucky narrowed his eyes. “I’m beginning to see,” he said quietly. “This is another sin, isn’t it, Steve?”

“Shut up,” Steve insisted, stepping back. “Just – Just stop!”

Bucky exhaled, shaking his head. He leaned back, then lay down on the cave floor, extending his furry legs and hooves towards the fire pit. He tucked his arms under his head, creating enough gap for his antlers to rest comfortably. Always taunting Steve, his cock lay amongst his fur, just exposed enough to be tempting.

Steve jerked his head and strode out of the cave entrance. He took several deep breaths, looking out at the trees. The sun was setting. Bucky would soon be preparing supper. Then he would pull Steve back into the alcove in the cave wall, settle Steve at his side, his hands on Steve’s skin –

Steve couldn’t face it anymore. He broke into a run.

“Steve!”

Steve ignored Bucky’s shout. He followed the light of the sun west, weaving through the trees and bushes. His pants caught on a patch of thorns and he felt his skin rip, blood start to trickle down his leg, and he ignored it. 

He ran out of breath before he ran out of trees. Steve had to stop, grab onto a large trunk and lean against it, panting hard.

The forest stretched ever on around him.

“Steve,” Bucky murmured somewhere close to him.

Steve jerked, looking around. Bucky stepped out from behind the tree, just emerging from the shadows, and knelt in front of Steve to touch his shoulders.

“Where were you going?” Bucky asked in a soft voice. “I told you. This place is magic. You won’t be able to find your way out.”

Steve screwed up his face and tore away. He grabbed his hair with both hands, then fell to his knees and just panted for breath. Bucky moved closer, his hand resting on Steve’s bare back.

“I’m sorry,” Steve rasped. “I’m… I can’t take it anymore… I don’t deserve this, Buck. You should’a just let me die…”

Bucky sighed. He rose to his feet, towering over Steve.

“Let me show you something,” Bucky said gently. “Take my hand.”

Steve looked up at Bucky’s face. His head and shoulders and antlers stood against the light of the setting sun, casting his face into shadows and a soft orange glow. Bucky held out his massive hand. Steve glanced at it, his gaze drifting briefly to Bucky’s truthfully massive dick still just hanging between his massive thighs, then away again. He stood, then put his hand in Bucky’s. 

It felt like taking the Devil’s hand.

Bucky squeezed his hand and smiled kindly at him. He had Steve turn and approach the large oak Steve had rested against. It cast a long shadow that was deep at the knotted roots. Bucky stepped into the shadow like it was a trap door and Steve barely hesitated a second before following him.

A thick blackness overtook him, like a suffocating hug, and then Steve was blinking his eyes open to a moonlit forest.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Just wait,” Bucky said.

The trees were spread wide and the ground was fresh of debris, just thick grass. There was no thicket. No animals chirped or called out in the night, but a light breeze tossed the leaves about. Steve looked up and saw pine needles.

Bucky pulled Steve around one massive evergreen and they stopped face-to-face with a pool. It was wide and still. A small waterfall fed it on the far side. The bank was littered with smooth stones. They glowed in the moonlight and clattered under Bucky’s hooves. Steve stepped onto them, wincing, but they were smooth and slid into a flat surface under his bare feet.

Bucky stopped at the edge of the pool. He crouched down, bending his legs at each joint, then pulled Steve in front of him and picked him up with ease. Steve inhaled, but Bucky set him on his knee without pausing. He wrapped his arms around Steve’s middle and held him there.

“Look into the pool,” Bucky said gently.

Steve looked. He saw the moon’s reflection; almost gone, yet still bright.

“What do you see?” Bucky asked.

Steve shrugged. He looked more, watching the reflection of the slow waterfall, found the pine trees, the rocks visible under the surface of the water and lining the pool.

“Lean forward,” Bucky added.

Steve did. He caught his own reflection, as well as Bucky’s, and grimaced.

“Tell me what you see,” Bucky asked again.

Steve sighed. “Me,” he muttered. “Scrawny little shit that’s cheated death a dozen times now.”

Bucky shook his head and pointed to their reflections. “Put aside your self,” he said. “Tell me what you see.”

Steve frowned. “I don’t know,” he said, looking at himself. “Me?”

“I see a person,” Bucky said softly. “Just a person. One that deserves a second chance.”

“Didn’t you hear what I said about cheatin’ death?” Steve countered.

“A second chance at loving himself,” Bucky told Steve firmly. “Look. Tell me where in your reflection you see something unworthy of a new hope.”

Steve frowned again. He looked, and he looked hard. 

“I don’ know,” he mumbled.

Bucky nodded. “There isn’t,” he said. “Like anyone else, Stevie. You deserve your second chance. I may have been selfish in giving it to you, but now you have it, and it’s up to you to use it to the best of your ability.”

Steve bit his lip. He looked away. The pool’s surface was too still, too mirror-like.

“I used to meet my people here,” Bucky said then. “Long before your kind walked the earth. We came here because it was familiar. I do not remember why. Not anymore.”

Steve looked back to the water, but not to himself. To Bucky’s reflection. His eyes were sad again. Steve squared his jaw. He pointed to Bucky’s reflection. 

“Look,” he said.

Bucky looked, blinking slowly. “Yes?”

“What do _you_ see?” Steve countered.

Bucky’s lip curled at the corner. He chuckled, but Steve stood his ground. Metaphorically. He remained seated on Bucky’s knee. 

“What do you see?” he asked again. “‘Cause I see a sad old man.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Bucky said gently.

Steve clenched his jaw, pursing his lips, and nodded. He made up his mind. He’d taken the Devil’s hand once, and that surely was enough to secure his place in the lake of fire, so he might as well earn it.

“There you go,” he said gruffly. “That’s what I’m gonna do then. I’ll stay with you. Make sure you don’t fall asleep like your mountain buddy. ‘Til I’m dead again.”

Bucky smiled. “What an odd creature,” he murmured, still staring at their reflections. “I try to teach you to reflect on yourself. To find new meaning to your life. And instead, you turn it on me.”

“Like I said t’other day,” Steve grumbled. “Ain’t you met an Irishman before?”

Bucky laughed. He looked at Steve’s face, his grin wide. Steve looked up, too, meeting Bucky’s gaze. Bucky’s fangs glinted in the moonlight, and Steve would’ve expected that his monstrous visage would’ve frightened him. 

Bucky’s eyes were kind, wrinkled at the corners. His smile was warm despite his giant fuck-off teeth. Steve glanced away.

“I’ll take you back,” Bucky said softly. “You’ll gain your strength again soon. Then you can decide where you want to go.”

Steve stubbornly set his jaw. “Nowhere,” he said. “I’m dead, alright? To the world, at least. I’m gonna stay with you.”

“I’m sure there are people –” Bucky said.

Steve shook his head. “They’ll think I’m dead,” he said. “And, really… There was only Peggy left. I’d rather her mourn me and move on than let her think I died and show up again a few days later lookin’ like I did ‘fore the serum.”

Bucky hummed softly, low and gravelly. Steve looked down at the rocks lining the beach, then realized with a jolt that they were actually rounded quartz crystals.

“Jesus,” he repeated.

“You keep invoking this person,” Bucky said teasingly. “Yet you never explained who he was.”

Steve shrugged. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m just surprised, the beach – The quartz.”

Bucky looked down, then chuckled. “Look into the center of the pool.”

Steve glanced at Bucky, then peered into the depth of the pool and squinted. Beneath the reflections of the moonlight, he saw a large crystal formation.

“Damn,” he muttered.

Bucky rose with Steve then, rose still holding Steve in his arms. Steve yelped and grabbed onto Bucky’s neck and hair, but Bucky chuckled and just shifted him to brace Steve against his chest better. Steve blushed again, his ass tucked against Bucky’s elbow. 

“We’ll go back now,” Bucky said. “Best not to spend too long here. We might forget the other world entirely.”

“I don’t even wanna figure that shit out,” Steve admitted wearily. 

Bucky chuckled again. “Don’t worry your pretty head about it,” he offered.

Steve squeaked at _pretty_ and Bucky just chuckled again. He stepped into yet another shadow with Steve and as Steve blinked, they reappeared in the sunny woods outside Bucky’s cave.

“You can put me down,” Steve muttered.

Bucky looked at him with a smile, then bent his knees and put Steve back on his feet. Steve hugged his cloak around him tighter again, feeling woozy. Bucky patted his shoulder with a heavy hand and started walking, away from the cave.

“Where are you going?” Steve called.

“A walk,” Bucky said, glancing over his shoulder. “Would you like to walk with me?”

Steve considered the cave, the chill in the air, the way his ankles were exposed. He hastened to catch up with Bucky.

Bucky’s stride was much longer than his, however. Steve huffed and puffed to keep up with Bucky, who was still walking slowly. After a few minutes, Bucky stopped and turned to him. Steve barely could open his mouth before Bucky was lifting him off his feet again. He tucked Steve into the crook of his arm again, resting him against his chest, and Steve just blinked.

Bucky kept walking. Steve was torn between protesting and leaning against Bucky’s shoulder to take a deep breath. He was much warmer now that his feet weren’t against the damp earth.

  
Steve huffed, but leaned against Bucky’s shoulder. When he did, Bucky smiled softly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _i'm loving y'all blowing up the comments over the fact that steve is still in his feelings, i love y'all. see you tomorrow!!! maybe..._


	7. Act II, Scene I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _GUESS WHAT HAPPENS!!! TWO BIG THINGS!!! AND ART!!!_

#  **_Act II, Scene I_ **

  
  


Steve eventually decided to not think too hard about where he was, what Bucky was, how he got there. He’d seen too much to deny Bucky’s power. He’d felt too much to continue trying to reconcile it with the Bible.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been there. How long it had been since his old body landed in the bog, how young this body was. A few weeks.

Steve had come to terms with his life. Afterlife. Whatever it was. Whatever the fuck happened to him. He remembered aiming the Valkyrie for the Atlantic and jumping from the plane. He remembered grabbing the pull of his parachute. He remembered letting go again. Then he’d been awake again, looking up at Bucky. Steve had come to terms with it.

Steve got lightheaded and winded easily again, but it didn’t bother him as much. He never ran anywhere. And Bucky never asked if he needed a hand, just picked him up and tucked him against his chest like a doll.

Steve had come to terms with that, too.

It had been a few weeks. The deer carcass that Bucky had hung in the corner Steve’s first night there had been eaten, a second and third replaced and gone, their fur used for Steve’s new clothes. He was kept plenty warm at night. He still woke up spread out on Bucky’s chest.

Maybe it had been longer than a few weeks. It felt like time was different in Bucky’s woods.

“Do you know how to shoot a bow and arrow?” Bucky asked Steve one morning.

“No,” Steve answered honestly. “Pretty good with a gun, but not sure a bow’s very similar.”

Bucky curled his lip. “No,” he said. “I don’t care for guns. A bow can do all a gun can and with less fear.”

Steve looked at Bucky’s hands, carving an arrowhead from stone. “I reckon you’re right,” he agreed gently.

Bucky gave a firm nod, his expression sour now. He chipped at the arrowhead with a little more force and broke off the tip. He sighed and deflated, looking at it.

Steve reached over and took it, then took the tool Bucky had been using to carve it, and started breaking it down into a smaller piece to match a new point.

“There you go,” Bucky murmured, his hand reaching across Steve’s back. “That’s better.”

Steve gave him a smile and nodded. Bucky’s sourness was gone, he only smiled. Steve focused on the arrowhead again. He’d made a few, but they’d all been clumsy. Since Bucky had started it already, it was easier.

Bucky watched him for a moment, then he sat up, looking over his shoulder towards the cave entrance. His face was suddenly sour again. Steve paused.

“What?” he asked.

“Humans,” Bucky murmured. “In the bog…”

Steve glanced towards the cave entrance, too. Bucky got up suddenly, walking out. Steve dropped the arrowhead and carving tool and followed Bucky, but Bucky’s strides were longer, and this time, faster. He didn’t stop to pick Steve up, and soon, he vanished among the trees. Steve stopped, realizing he would get lost without Bucky to walk with him. He knelt down, then sat on his butt to wait for Bucky to come back instead of trying to wander on his own.

The earth shook. Steve jumped up, looking around in fear and wild panic as he expected the boom of an explosion, but there was just a groan deep in the soil. Bucky reappeared suddenly, right in front of Steve, making him yelp.

“Jesus _Christ_ almighty, pal!” Steve gasped. “You scared the shit outta –”

“Come look,” Bucky snapped, scooping Steve up.

Steve grabbed onto Bucky’s antlers and beard for balance as Bucky took off through the trees again. He’d never run with Steve in his arms, his gait was quite odd. Steve held on tight. 

They reached the edge of the bog. Bucky crouched and settled Steve on his knee. 

There were men in the bog, but there were machines too. They were loud, rattling the air, and there was a loud sucking sound from the earth.

“They’re _draining_ it,” Bucky spat.

“Oh –” Steve gasped.

His mind went to the body he’d left behind in the bog. But this wasn’t _his_ bog. This wasn’t the bog that Bucky had made him from. It was a different one. Steve saw company logos and names on the machines and it was all in Swedish.

“What do they think they’re doing?” Bucky hissed.

Steve shook his head. He didn’t know.

Bucky sank to his knees, lifting Steve into his arms again. He looked suddenly older. There was even white at his temples that Steve hadn't seen before.

“They’ll kill it,” Bucky whispered. “Everything. This place will – It will die.”

Steve looked up at Bucky. Tears beaded in his eyes.

Steve touched Bucky’s face, then slipped from his arms. Bucky made a shocked noise, a _pained_ noise, and grabbed for him again. 

“I’m just gonna go look,” Steve whispered.

“No!” Bucky growled suddenly, grabbing Steve up from the ground again. “No, they’ll take you, too!”

Steve was startled. Bucky held him close, arms tight, and tucked their foreheads together.

“This is what humans do,” Bucky growled again.

His voice was darker than Steve was used to. Angry. Hurt.

“They kill and they poison and they _take,_ ” Bucky spat out. “I _will not_ let them take you from me.”

Steve blinked. He touched Bucky’s face.

“They won’t take me,” he said gently. “Look. I’m just gonna go see who they are. Why they’re doing this.”

“They’re doing it for the peat!” Bucky hissed; his gaze was darker, too, wild, looking out at the machines in the bog. “They found out they can burn it long ago for fuel; it poisons the earth, but they don’t care! They just want to burn their factories hotter and faster, they don’t care what they kill in the process!”

Steve touched Bucky’s face, pulling it back to meet his gaze. Bucky’s eyes, normally a soft blue-gray, were literally dark, like storm clouds had gathered across the dawn sky. They looked almost black.

“Buck,” Steve whispered. 

Bucky let out a low, keening sound and pressed his forehead against Steve’s. Steve cupped Bucky’s face with both hands, then brushed at his hair. There were definitely white strands at his temples.

“Is this the first time this has happened?” Steve asked quietly.

Bucky shook his head.

Steve licked his lips, then cupped Bucky’s chin. “Can I just go see who they are?” he asked. “Maybe there’s something I can do.”

Bucky looked dejected. He let out his breath, like he was about to collapse under the weight of the world.

“Promise you’ll come right back?” he rumbled.

“I promise,” Steve said carefully.

Bucky nodded. He lowered Steve back onto his feet, then brushed his chin with a knuckle. Steve touched Bucky’s face again, then pulled the hood of his cloak up and stepped carefully through the thicket.

Steve hadn't been a stealth operative for the Allies for nothing. He was perhaps even better at it now, being so much lighter and smaller.

He crept to the edge of the bog, just to where he no longer had cover. There was a large group of men nearby, sitting around a pickup truck and drinking from various thermoses. They were speaking what Steve presumed was Swedish. All of them were facing away from the woods, all turned towards the bog where the pump was running.

Steve circled around until he was directly behind the truck, then crept right up to it. The earth trembled a little under-foot, but he wasn’t sure if it was the machines or Bucky’s rage.

There was a newspaper sitting on the tailgate, just within reach. Steve checked it first. He was curious, he had to admit.

He wanted to know what the date was.

It was in Swedish, of course, but the numbers were all Western. Steve glanced at the laughing men and checked the top of the paper, where a date should be. There were a few numbers, then a format he recognized. Europe put the day, then the month, then the year, he was pretty sure.

The day and the month didn’t matter so much once he saw the year. It was 1949.

Steve stood there in horror for a second. He picked up the newspaper, completely thrown, then he heard someone shout. He glanced up and someone was facing him. Steve dropped the paper and ran, darting back into the woods as the crew of men shouted after him. 

Bucky scooped Steve up and then they were stepping into a shadow. They came back out into the cave.

Bucky was trembling. He took Steve right to the nest and carried him in, then pressed him on his back and covered him wholly. Steve froze up, confused and unsure of what to think, but Bucky wrapped around him in a protective manner. He pressed his face against Steve’s, a low growl sounding in his chest, Steve realized belatedly.

“Buck,” Steve whispered.

“They almost caught you!” Bucky growled. “They almost took you!”

“No, they didn’t,” Steve insisted.

Bucky growled louder, his knees pushing to frame Steve’s hips. He caged Steve in, his head bent low to press their foreheads together.

“Bad enough they’re killing me,” Bucky rumbled. “If they took you –”

“Killing –!” Steve gasped.

Bucky shut his eyes as if in pain. He nodded.

Steve grabbed Bucky’s face, then his hair. He didn’t know what to say.

“I’m so sorry,” he murmured.

Bucky’s growl deepened and extended to the earth beneath them. He abruptly grabbed Steve’s hair and pulled his head back, forcing him to arch his throat –

Bucky’s mouth pressed to his. Steve gasped, shocked, but Bucky growled into his open mouth and took his surprise as an opportunity. Bucky’s mouth was heavy on his, his teeth sharp. They pulled at Steve’s lower lip and suddenly Steve tasted blood.

Steve’s head spun, but he shoved at Bucky’s shoulders. Bucky pulled back, but then he growled again so that the earth shook beneath them. His eyes _were_ black. Entirely. The blood he’d drawn from Steve’s lip dripped from his fangs, stained his lips, and trailed down his lip. It formed a bead, then it separated and fell. Steve felt it hit his chest. He took a breath.

He wasn’t frightened, though. He should’ve been.

Bucky’s eyes gained their sclera again. He blinked, and then he rumbled, lowering his head. He licked the blood clean of his lips, reached and licked the drop from Steve’s chest. He ducked close again and nuzzled his nose against Steve’s. Steve inhaled again.

“I was frightened,” Bucky murmured, the earth shaking only a little. “They saw you, Steve, and I – I realized…”

“That you want to kiss me?” Steve guessed weakly.

Bucky rumbled again and nodded. It was almost like a purr. Steve inhaled a third time.

“I realized what you mean to me now,” Bucky said softly. 

“And that is that you want to kiss me!” Steve repeated in a squeak.

Bucky let out a weary chuckle. He cupped Steve’s cheek with a large hand, his rough thumb sweeping under Steve’s eye.

“Are you so surprised?” he asked.

“A bit!” Steve hissed.

Bucky rumbled again. His mouth came close to Steve’s, just barely separated. Steve inhaled a fourth time and his lower lip brushed Bucky’s.

“Please be honest, dear,” Bucky murmured to him. “Don’t let worry of some foolish sin cloud your thoughts. Do you believe in fate?”

“Asks an immortal being,” Steve whispered.

Bucky smiled. “Stevie,” he said quietly. “If humans were to take you from me now, I fear I would lose myself to rage…”

Steve reached up and cupped Bucky’s cheek. Bucky turned his face and nuzzled into his palm, then took his wrist, held his hand in place, and pressed a kiss to the center of his palm.

“They saw you and I felt ready to sink them all into the earth,” Bucky murmured. “Let the poison of their machinery and greed be damned.”

Steve inhaled deeply. He touched Bucky’s cheek with his other hand, too.

“Do you know what I speak of?” Bucky asked softly. “Do you feel the same?”

Steve licked his lips. He tasted blood again, but swallowed it. His heart was pounding.

“I –” he began. “I feared…”

Bucky met his gaze, his eyes hooded. They were pale blue once again. Not a storm cloud in sight. Steve swallowed the copper taste in his mouth.

“A man loving another man is nothing odd to you?” Steve whispered. “Nothing awful?”

Bucky tipped his head into Steve’s palm, his gaze sad. “No, dearheart,” he answered.

Steve slid his hand around Bucky’s neck and pulled him down. This time he lifted his own chin to press his mouth against Bucky’s.

Bucky kissed him with a bit less aggression this time. Less frantic. 

“I couldn’t lose you,” Bucky murmured against his mouth.

“You won’t,” Steve told Bucky softly.

Bucky pulled them to the side, lifting Steve into his lap. He pressed their foreheads together, his arms tight around Steve. Steve looked up at him and touched the streak of white in his hair.

“Is this because of the peat farming?” Steve asked, pulling white through his fingers. “It’s hurting you?”

Bucky nodded sadly. “My life-force is connected to the earth,” he said. 

Steve took a steadying breath, now cupping Bucky’s cheek. “They can’t kill you, can they?”

Bucky thinned his lips. Steve cupped his jaw, brushed back his hair worriedly, but Bucky just shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know,” he admitted softly. “I don’t know.”

Steve pressed his forehead against Bucky’s, then brought their lips together again. Bucky cupped his face, keeping their lips together.

“I’ll take care of you,” Steve murmured. “I’ll make sure they don’t kill you.”

Bucky smiled. “And how will you do that, dearheart?”

Steve squared his shoulders. “I’ll find whoever’s draining the wetlands,” he said, “and I’ll – I’ll do something.”

Bucky smiled a little more, but he didn’t look too convinced. Steve sat upright, holding onto Bucky’s shoulders to keep himself up.

“I’ll use your magic,” he said. “ _We’ll_ use your magic! Destroy their machinery! Something!”

“Stevie,” Bucky said gently. “I can’t – I don’t have the energy to do that.”

Steve deflated. “What do you mean?”

“My life-force is connected to the land, but my energy is connected to my worshippers,” Bucky said. “Their offerings are what keep me awake, honey, and – and I just don’t have the followers keeping me awake to do something like that.”

Steve bit his lip. “Oh,” he said. “Well – Well, then we’ll go to your followers! Get them to start recruiting more followers! If Christians can do it, why not Pagans!”

Bucky shrugged. He kissed Steve’s forehead.

“I don’t know how to do that,” he said. “I don’t know how you would do that, either.”

“But how did you do that before?” Steve insisted. “When you had more followers, more energy?”

Bucky shrugged again. “I didn’t, they came to me,” he explained. “They would come to the bogs, to the forests, or simply in their homes, they’d invoke one of my names as they left their offerings. I never went to them, they always came to me.”

“But you interacted with them somehow, or they wouldn’t continue to worship you,” Steve pressed. 

“I don’t remember,” Bucky sighed.

Steve leaned closer. Bucky touched Steve’s face, his fingers trailing tenderly down his jaw to his chin.

“I haven’t been this awake or aware in a very long time, sweetheart,” Bucky told him in a soft voice. “You being here? That’s changed so much for me.”

Steve lifted his eyes. “We could change it?” he asked.

“Maybe _you_ could change it,” Bucky answered.

Steve felt lost. He didn’t know. He would try, but… He pressed closer, kissing Bucky again. Bucky cupped his face, returning the kiss hotly. Steve could still taste blood and didn’t care. Bucky lifted him into his lap and Steve leaned against his chest, a hand wrapping around the base of one of Bucky’s antlers. He held his forehead against Bucky’s. Bucky’s hands spanned his back. A low rumble began in Bucky’s chest again. Steve brushed his fingers through the white hairs.

“Let’s rest a while,” Bucky murmured. “We can talk about stopping the humans later.”

Bucky’s lethargy frightened Steve. He pulled back, taking Bucky’s hands and tugging him back.

“Let’s go for a walk,” he insisted. “C’mon.”

Bucky sighed, but nodded. They climbed out of the nest alcove and Bucky lifted Steve into his arms, then set him on his shoulders. Steve leaned against his head, holding onto his antlers, and Bucky began a slow walk out of the cave.

It was near to noon. The forest was quiet. Bucky walked Steve to the edge of the bog, the one of this realm, and lowered Steve to his feet again. Steve took Bucky’s hand and they walked through the bog, tracing through the raised banks of peat and moss and around the pools of water.

Bucky paused after some time. Steve paused by him as Bucky knelt and blew gently upon a wilted patch of flowers. 

Steve watched little balls of light fall like flecks of dust from Bucky’s lips and land upon the brown and cracked flowers. The plants absorbed the light and green returned to them. Their flowers lifted, petals unfurling, leaves uncurling. Bucky smiled at the little plant and rose to his hooves again. Steve seized his hand.

“That’s it!” he cried.

Bucky frowned. “What?”

“That’s how we’ll stop the humans!” Steve said excitedly. “With your magic, we’ll make the plants grow and take over their machines!”

Bucky’s face lifted. “I could do that,” he murmured.

Steve whooped. He jumped and Bucky swept him up with a laugh. Steve kissed him, feeling victorious, then gave his shoulders a tug.

“We’ll go now, then wait ‘til night and they’re all gone,” he said excitedly. “And we’ll make the plants grow, so much that they’ll have to realize that they’re messing with powers beyond them!”

Bucky smiled at him. “That could work,” he said, brushing a hand over Steve’s cheek. 

“C’mon,” Steve said eagerly. “Let’s go.”

Bucky nodded. He secured Steve in his arms and began a trot back to the forest and the nearest shadow. Steve shut his eyes as Bucky slipped through the shade below an alder tree. They could fix this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _i can hear y'all freaking the fuck out you're welcome. make sure you check chaos's twitter to retweet and like the art!!!_


	8. Act II, Scene II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _hi guys!! there's some smut in this chapter, so be prepared!_

#  **_Act II, Scene II_ **

It was already night outside Bucky’s realm. Bucky and Steve emerged from a shadow of some large machine, with gaping jaws ready to tear apart the land. The work site was deserted. Steve climbed down from Bucky’s shoulders and looked around. There were fences closing off the site, but it was much bigger than they’d anticipated.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Steve said to Bucky.

Bucky knelt by an abandoned shovel. It was stuck into the ground, its point buried in exposed peat. Bucky slipped the metal blade free, then lay it aside and crumbled the peat around the wound in the bog, until the gash was filled. Bucky tipped his head to the side, a pained expression on his face, and he let his hand sink into a soft part of the ground.

Green moss began to grow across the exposed peat. Steve leaned on his shoulders, watching with fascination as Bucky’s face lined itself in concentration. Water began to pool around Bucky’s hand, then grew quickly. Bucky let out a tired sigh and slid his hand free of the peat. The water grew steadily, moss following it, and Bucky rose to his feet. He began to walk towards the fence and moss followed in the marks of his hooves. 

Steve hastily followed, watching in awe as green things began growing at an even faster rate. Bucky touched the fence and moss began to overtake it, climbing the links and covering the barbed wire at the top with ease. The moss began running down the fence in both directions, growing in the blink of an eye.

“Wow,” Steve whispered.

“The land is so tired,” Bucky murmured. “But it just needs a boost.”

Bucky walked away from the fence. He passed Steve and picked him up by the back of his shirt without even looking and tucked Steve onto his shoulders again. Steve held onto his antlers and twisted around to watch more plants, grasses and flowers, growing in Bucky’s footsteps. Bucky neared the closest machine, his stride lengthening. 

Bucky stepped onto the machine’s claws, jumping almost onto the top of the cab. Steve tightened his grip on Bucky’s antlers as Bucky climbed to the top, his hooves clattering on the metal. Once at the top, Bucky bent his legs and then jumped up. Steve’s gut hooked as gravity lost them, then they plummeted and Bucky slammed into the machine, caving in the entire cab. 

“Fuck yeah!” Steve shouted.

Bucky jumped from the wreck, landing far too softly on the earth. Steve looked around and moss and grass were consuming the metal wreck as it sank into the peat.

“Will it hurt the bog?” Steve asked.

“Worse things have been swallowed by the earth,” Bucky said darkly, already walking towards another machine. “It will 

There were pumps and tractors and cars. Bucky crushed them all. Dawn was approaching and Steve could tell that Bucky was tired, but he was also brighter. Steve could see excitement behind his eyes.

Steve heard motors in the distance and tugged gently on Bucky’s hair. “They’re coming,” he warned.

Bucky nodded and approached the edge of the forest. Steve glanced back, biting his lip as the lights of approaching vehicles grew brighter.

“Can we hide somehow and watch?” he asked.

Bucky looked back, too. He lifted Steve from his shoulders, picking him up again by just the back of his shirt, and cradled him against his chest.

“I think so,” he said, giving Steve a grin. “But we might not have to hide too much.”

Steve realized what Bucky intended and grinned. Bucky crouched in a thicket, holding Steve to his chest, and they watched as a truck slowed to a stop by the fence.

A single man got out. In the distance between them, Steve couldn’t really see his face. But he grabbed his hair and shouted something in probably Swedish at the green and the wreckage. Another truck pulled up behind the first and three people got out, walking up to the gate. The four men began arguing, shouting to each other. Steve grinned. 

A third car arrived and two more men got out, and the four original men shut up at once. The two newcomers neared the fence in silence. Steve watched their mouths move, but their words were too quiet to hear.

“I think they’re upset,” Steve whispered.

Bucky chuckled softly. “I think so, too.”

One of the newcomers slammed a hand against the fence, rattling the links under the moss, then moved to the gate and forced it open. The six men entered, looking around, and one paused by a machine. He called out to the others and they gathered, all pointing to a mark in the exposed metal. Steve craned his neck and realized they were looking at one of Bucky’s hoofprints.

“I think that’s enough,” Bucky said near Steve’s ear.

Steve shivered at his voice, so soft and close. He nodded. Bucky pushed up and slipped into a shadow. Steve held his breath as the shadows compressed him, then inhaled deeply again back in Bucky’s cave.

Bucky put Steve on his feet and sank to the ground by the fire. Bucky let out a long sigh, his shoulders slumping forward, then leaned back on his elbows and extended his legs in front of him. 

Steve stepped up behind him and leaned over his head, tucked between his antlers. He pulled the white streak of hair from Bucky’s forehead and pressed a kiss to the center of his eyebrows. Bucky tipped his head back and smiled at him.

“How did that feel, pal?” Steve asked.

Bucky’s smile grew into a grin. He reached up and tangled his hand into Steve’s hair, pulling him closer.

“I knew you landed in my bog for a reason,” he said quietly.

He pulled Steve into a kiss. Steve held onto one of Bucky’s antlers to keep himself steady, excitement tickling the base of his spine. Bucky’s lips left Steve’s and instead pressed to his jaw, then his neck. Steve looked up, his eyes falling shut, as Bucky kissed his pulse.

“Hang on,” Steve murmured, stepping out from between Bucky’s antlers.

He crossed in front of Bucky and climbed into his lap. Bucky began to purr as Steve settled into his lap, weight cushioned by Bucky’s thick fur. Bucky nuzzled his nose against Steve’s as he wrapped his arms around him, a hand at the small of his back and a hand cupping the back of his neck.

“Better?” Bucky asked softly.

Steve nodded, his breath now coming quickly. Bucky kissed his cheek, then his jaw.

Steve swallows, feeling his gut beginning to twist in want. It’s combated by sudden guilt, fear, and he turns his face away. Bucky kisses down his neck, then pauses, nuzzling him near his shoulder.

“I need to feed you,” Bucky murmured.

Steve smiled weakly. “‘M not a dog, yannow. Can feed myself.”

Bucky lifted his head, shaking it. “No, pet,” he said, cupping Steve’s face. “ _ I  _ need to. I need to do it, for me.”

Steve faltered, biting his lip. Bucky kissed his forehead.

“Let’s pick some mushrooms,” he said.

Steve nodded. He got up and Bucky pushed to his hooves, then lifted Steve casually and cradled him in one arm. Steve reached up and secured himself with a grip on Bucky’s antlers as Bucky picked up a basket and a small knife.

So they left. They wandered the woods, picking up mushrooms and wild greens. As the basket filled, a wolf trotted up to them with a couple of rabbits in its jaws. Bucky took them and thanked the beast, scratching behind its ears, before moving on. Steve was still a little scared of the bigger animals, too scared to try petting one, but a squirrel leapt onto Bucky’s antlers as they passed through the trees and climbed into Steve’s arms with curiosity.

The squirrel left them as they returned to the cave. Bucky put Steve down and placed the thick pan on the fire before preparing the food. He washed the mushrooms and greens, butchered the rabbit, and added it all into the pan with flakes of salt and rosemary. Steve yawned, covering his mouth with a hand. Bucky filled a small earthenware cup with water and pushed it into his hand.

“Thanks,” Steve told him, smiling.

Bucky smiled back and brushed a hand over his cheek. Steve grabbed his cloak from the nest and wrapped himself in it as the sunlight faded from the cave, replaced only by the glow of the fire.

They ate soon. Steve felt sleepy once his stomach was full. Bucky lifted him and carried him to the nest, then settled him down like one would a cherished doll. Bucky curled up around him and Steve rested his head on Bucky’s soft stomach.

“I will need to sleep for a while,” Bucky murmured. “I used a lot of energy tonight.”

“Okay,” Steve answered softly.

“Don’t stray too far from the cave while I’m asleep,” Bucky added, his voice already going slow. “You’ll get lost.”   
  


Steve just nodded. He felt nearly as exhausted as Bucky. He shut his eyes and sleep claimed him.

#  **_*_ **

They went back to the site they’d destroyed. It was abandoned, the fences torn down but the machinery left to sink into the earth. It brought a tired but warm smile to Bucky’s face. Steve took his arm and grinned.

“Let’s do it to all of them,” he said. “Every bog that’s being drained.”

Bucky nodded slowly. “Yes,” he agreed.

Bucky knew where humans were destroying his wetlands. They arrived at night and Bucky let green things grow until all the machines were covered. It was such a small thing, yet made all the difference. They watched the humans look around in confusion and smiled. Steve convinced him to travel near a city and he snuck into downtown to find a newspaper, to see if there was any widespread news about the sudden overgrowth of bogs.

It felt odd to be around humans again, Steve realized. He’d stolen clothes from a worksite, so he wore human jeans and a jacket over his leather tunic, but he felt out of place. Everyone else around him wore fashion that was unfamiliar; form-fitting pants that flared out at the knee, fringed jackets, jumpsuits that seemed to have no purpose. He found a newspaper and discovered the date was 1955. The front page talked about Vietnam and Laos. Steve stole the paper and poured over it by a library. There was an article in the back about a rise in Satanism, but when he read it, it looked more like pagans worshipping Bucky. It even mentioned an interview with a practitioner who referenced what they’d been doing at the bogs. 

Steve took the newspaper back to Bucky. He was delighted.

“If people are worshipping me again, I’ll be stronger,” he told Steve. “I can do more to stop humans destroying the wild!”

Steve climbed up his torso and kissed his mouth firmly. “ _ We’ll _ do it,” he promised. “You’ve got me ‘til the end of the line, Buck.”   


Bucky’s arms circled around Steve, a smile on his lips. “I like that,” he murmured. “‘Til the end of the line, sweetheart.”

They lay together at night, Steve pressed to Bucky’s chest with one of Bucky’s large hands covering his stomach. It was never too cold at night, just enough that Steve needed to stay snuggled against Bucky. The many furs and pillows in the nest and the nearby fire kept them warm. 

Steve actually noticed the fire was growing stronger. He thought perhaps it was like Bucky, it was tied to worshippers. The white streak stayed in Bucky’s hair, but his eyes lost their bags and his skin brightened more and more every day. They arrived at sites of deforestation as well as the draining of wetlands and found protesters shouting about the damage being done to the earth. At one of these sites, Bucky caught Steve up and pointed to a necklace a protestor was wearing.   


“I know that symbol,” he said. “That’s for me!”

Steve broke into a wide grin. He couldn’t see it from this distance, but it was some sort of pentagram with another design inside and around it. 

“They know you,” Steve murmured. “They’re working for you.”

Bucky’s face was brighter than the sun. Steve was in love with him.

As Bucky gained strength, he started teaching Steve magic. Somehow, it was easy for Steve to learn shadow travel and how to encourage plant growth. Moss and grass didn’t burst up where he walked, but he could hum to a little flower and bring its color up. Shadow traveling without Bucky made it easier for him to sneak around human cities and the worksites they scoped out. Steve had been pretty stealthy in the war, but now he was literally able to sink into the shadows.

Sometimes, he wondered what it would be like to go back to life as a normal person. When he was looking through the city for news about protests and their magic efforts to protect the forests and wetlands, he sometimes saw families out with their children, and wondered what it would be like to be one of them. 

He wondered about Peggy. And if he and she truly could have had a loving marriage.

At night, Steve rested his head near Bucky’s heart. He listened to it, felt Bucky’s chest lifting and settling as he breathed, and knew he couldn’t go back. He didn’t want to. And he knew he would have been a terrible husband to Peggy, he realized eventually. He’d loved her, but he didn’t want her. 

At night, Bucky rested his cheek near Steve’s hair and ran a slow, gentle hand down his back. Steve lifted his head and kissed Bucky. His lips were soft, his beard wiry but not too scratchy. Steve tangled a hand in it and kept Bucky close.

Since time was such an odd thing in Bucky’s forest, Steve wasn’t sure how long it had been since Bucky first kissed him. It had been long enough that the worry and guilt Steve had had over kissing a man, or a pagan deity in the form of a man, was simply too little to bother him. He kissed Bucky whenever he wanted to. That was all the time. And he wanted more.

Steve broke the gentle kiss. Bucky rumbled, sliding a hand up his back. Steve pressed a light kiss to Bucky’s chin, then cupped his cheek and looked him in the eyes.

“Buck,” he murmured.

“Yeah, darlin’?” Bucky answered lowly.

Steve licked his lips. “D’you –” he began nervously. “Do you want… Yannow…?”

Bucky’s lips curled in a smile. “I don’ know,” he replied. “Do I want what?”

“Sex,” Steve blurted, his breath catching in his throat.

Bucky purred and bumped his nose against Steve’s. “If you want it,” he said. “I am content either way.”   
  


“I love you,” Steve added.

Bucky then grinned. He cupped Steve’s head and kissed him slowly, deeply. Steve melted into it.

“I love you, my sweet,” Bucky murmured against Steve’s mouth. “Infinitely so.”

Steve touched Bucky’s chest, then his waist. “I’d like to have sex with you,” he confessed softly. 

Bucky pushed Steve onto his back and lifted over him. “Then you shall have what you want,” he promised softly.

Steve’s breath came quicker. Bucky kissed his mouth, his jaw, his neck, and for this first time, he slid Steve’s pants down gently. Bucky brought their cocks together, spat into his palm, and stroked them both. Steve’s dick was so much fucking smaller than Bucky’s, just because of the sheer size difference between them, but as Bucky’s got hard, it grew up to twice the size of Steve’s. 

“I want it in me,” Steve confessed, hard as nails and close already.

“You’re so little, though,” Bucky chuckled. “I fear that might break you.”

“I don’t care,” Steve challenged. “Buck, c’mon, please?”

Bucky kissed him deeply again. His rough palm, massive against Steve’s dick, kept stroking them both. Steve panted into Bucky’s mouth, legs squirming beneath him. 

“Are you close, sweetheart?” Bucky murmured against his mouth.

Steve’s orgasm surprised him. He gasped, screwing his eyes shut as he came into Bucky’s fist, splattering his chest. Bucky kissed his neck, purring warmly, and scooped up Steve’s spent to slick up his own shaft. 

Steve looked down between them, at the head of Bucky’s thick cock poking in and out of its foreskin, and let out a sudden whine. Bucky rumbled again, hand now pumping himself, and Steve reached between them to touch it.

It was soft. Obviously, it was hard, but the skin was so delicate. Steve swiped his thumb into Bucky’s tip, gathering up pre-come, then brought it to his mouth and licked it off. Bucky suddenly growled and then Steve was startled again as Bucky came, shooting cum all over Steve’s body. It was an absolute mess, a puddle that covered Steve’s whole stomach practically. Steve scooped some up and licked it clean. 

“Heavens preserve me,” Bucky muttered, nuzzling into Steve’s neck.

Steve laughed softly. “Tastes nice,” he admitted. “I, um, I’ve had jizz before. That wasn’t mine. This tastes a lot better.”

Bucky hummed softly, kissing Steve’s cheek. “I’ll get a rag,” he offered. 

Steve nodded, glad he didn’t have to move or explain himself. They’d just masturbated together, but his limbs felt like lead. Bucky grabbed a wool cloth from a corner and wiped Steve’s stomach up, then tossed it outside the nest. Bucky collapsed again and Steve curled into his side. He kissed Bucky’s chest, just above his heart.

“I wanna have you in me,” Steve murmured.

Bucky kissed his hair. “If you promise to take it slow,” he agreed.

Steve grinned.

“Sweet dreams, my love,” Bucky then said.

“Goodnight,” Steve replied. “Love you.”

Bucky gave him another kiss to the top of his head. “And I love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _hope y'all liked this! next chapter will be out tomorrow. act III starts with chapter 10 btw. i might also be adding a 14th chapter, not sure yet. we'll see!_
> 
> _in unrelated news if you're following me on twitter, you've probably seen me talking about my disability issues and chronic pain, but i actually received a diagnosis today after going to doctors over and over for the past year; i have thoracic outlet syndrome. there's treatment/solutions that could fix my arm issues completely. so that's good news. the bad side is that i probably have to get surgery and a couple months of recovery, so i might be taking time off school. at the very least changing my schedule and staying home instead of going back to my dorm. not sure yet. thank you guys so much for being with me and commenting on my fics, it's a huge bright spot in my life and i honestly would be so much more miserable if i wasn't sharing fics and getting feedback from y'all. it means a lot. lots of love for everyone who's been with me for so long._


	9. Act II, Scene III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _following my writing is always a treat bc no one ever knows when i'm going to post an update, not even me. what time zone am i in? it doesn't matter, bc i'll update at any time a day. midnight? six in the morning? the evening? who knows. no one. not even me!_

#  **_Act II, Scene III_ **

  
  


Steve woke feeling uncomfortably warm. Bucky was sprawled on his back still, propped up by pillows so he could rest his head and antlers comfortably, but had kicked off many of their blankets and furs during the night. They buried Steve, probably causing his body to feel over-heated.

At least, he thought that until he climbed out. The cave was abnormally warm. Steve climbed out of the nest and realized why at once. The fire, which had been a reasonable size when they’d gone to sleep, was now practically a bonfire.

Steve reached back and shook Bucky’s knee. Bucky grunted and nudged him with a hoof, pushing him back. Steve crawled over him and shook his shoulder.

“Wha’?” Bucky grumbled.

“The fire!” Steve hissed. “It’s  _ huge! _ ”

Bucky blinked at him. He huffed, smacking his lips, then lifted Steve off of his torso much like one would do with a persistent pet. But he sat up and peeked out of the alcove of their nest.

“Huh,” he said.

“Huh!” Steve repeated.

Bucky slowly smiled. He pulled Steve close to him and then lifted him into his lap, hugging him close. Steve let out air as he was squashed in Bucky’s arms and huffed himself, squirming to get comfortable.

“Shouldn’t you be doing something?” he asked.

“No,” Bucky said softly. “That means that a large group of people, maybe several, are invoking my name.”

Steve looked back to the fire. It was half the height of the cave, probably taller than him, and its heat easily filled the alcove. The logs at its center, which never seemed to burn away, were glowing bright red. The smoke from it somehow didn’t fill the cave, didn’t sting their eyes or make them choke, but was perfuming the space with the rich scent of fire and wood. Bucky put Steve down and climbed out of the nest, then sank to his knees by the fire and cupped some into his palm.

Steve watched him, his eyes wide. Bucky cradled the fire close to his chest, smiling at it. He brought his ear close to the smoke trailing from the flame and grinned wider. Steve could see his eyes glistening, but since the fire’s smoke didn’t fill the room, he knew it wasn’t because of that.

“They are,” Bucky said quietly. “They’re leaving me offerings. Asking for blessings. Praying for peace and health and the vitality of the earth.”

Steve climbed out of the nest carefully. It was very warm, so he removed his tunic, leaving him in just his hide shoes and pants. He neared, but the heat of the fire was unbearable too close. He hung back, perhaps arm’s width away from Bucky, and watched a single tear slip down Bucky’s cheek.

“Can you answer their prayers?” Steve asked softly.

Bucky nodded slowly, still grinning. “I know where they are, who they are. In the old days, people asked for blessings on their crops. People are asking now about love and life and money? What money?”

He looked to Steve. Steve shrugged. Bucky glanced back at him, then reached into the fire and moved the logs around, so they weren’t as densely packed. The flames lost some height and the heat diminished; not too much, the room was still warm enough that Steve didn’t want to put his shirt back on, but he could approach and kneel down by Bucky’s side.

Bucky then took Steve’s hand and gave him a little bit of the flame. Steve gasped and jerked back instinctively, but it didn’t burn. It filled his whole body with emotion instead, an overwhelming mix of feelings that he couldn't distinguish from one another. He choked up with it, torn between strong joy and horrible grief. Steve covered his mouth with his other hand, blinking away quick tears. Bucky put an arm around him and cupped the hand holding the flame. The emotions calmed.

“Listen,” Bucky murmured.

Steve brought his ear close to the fire. As smoke trailed off the flame, little whispers reached his ear. Steve frowned, pulling it closer. The whispers grew louder as he focused on them, then he began to separate some voices from the others.

_ “– Bring him home safe, don’t let them capture him, keep him off the front lines –” _

_ “– Give me the scholarship, I can’t afford it without it –” _

_ “– Little girl is dying, please heal her –” _

_ “– They’re burning the forest, stop them! –” _

_ “– It’s poisoning the land, it’s killing innocent families’ income, it’s disfiguring the soldiers –” _

_ “– stop them –” _

_ “– stop them –” _

_ “Stop them!” _

Steve covered his mouth again. He lifted his eyes to Bucky, who was still crying silently.

“Buck,” Steve whispered. “I think – I think there’s another war.”

Bucky’s smile faded. He turned his gaze back to the fire, a frown replacing his warm expression. Slowly, his frown deepened.

“You’re right,” he said quietly. “It’s far away, past where my lands reach.”

“Is there another being like you in that place?” Steve asked.

Bucky shook his head slowly. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s been so long since I saw anyone…”

Steve gripped Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky glanced down, shaking his head.

“I used to feel it when blood was shed in violence anywhere on this planet,” Bucky murmured. “It was so rare… But it seems recently, all humans do is kill each other.”

Steve didn’t know what to say. He’d come to Bucky from a war.

“I can send them good blessings,” Bucky said. “Luck, that sort of thing. I don’t know if I can protect soldiers in a land far away.”

“Do what you can,” Steve answered softly.

Bucky nodded. He pushed to his hooves, then looked around the cave.

“It’s been so long –” he began again. “I don’t think I’ve had prayers in many turns of the earth.”

Steve reached up and squeezed Bucky’s hand. Bucky gave him a small smile, then stepped away from the fire to where he kept his cooking supplies. Steve watched him dig around, and then he came back with a clay jar. It was big enough that he had to hold it with both hands, which meant it was massive compared to Steve, but covered in dust like it hadn't been pulled from its corner in many, many years. 

Bucky returned to the fire, knelt down, then sat and extended his legs, putting his hooves near the stone ring containing the fire. He set the jar between his knees and pulled a clay plug from its top. Steve shifted closer, standing on his knees to look, and found that the jar was full of hazelnuts.

“I used to give these to people,” Bucky said softly, “they gave the people newfound wisdom. It’s one of the few blessings I remember.”

Steve put his hand on Bucky’s shoulder and squeezed. Bucky inched closer to the fire and plucked a single nut from the jar, then shut his eyes as he turned his ear towards the flames.

Steve watched him. Every minute or so, Bucky tossed a hazelnut into the fire. The flames became perfumed with the sweeter scent of the nuts as they burned steadily among the coals. The jar was filled to its top when Bucky started, but as he continued to listen to the prayers whispered in the smoke, the jar was emptied.

At the last hazelnut, Bucky suddenly turned to Steve. He took Steve’s hand and pressed the nut into his palm.

“A blessing,” Bucky murmured.

Steve smiled at him. He raised the nut to his lips and pressed a kiss to its hard shell, then tossed it gently into the fire.

“For both of us,” he said, looking at Bucky again.

Bucky smiled again. His eyelids were drooping, his movements slow. Steve stood up and touched his shoulders.

“I’ll get something for us to eat,” he said. “You stay here.”

Bucky nodded slowly. Steve bent and kissed his forehead, then stepped away. He saw Bucky yawn out of the corner of his eye a few times as he cut some meat from Bucky’s latest kill and picked mushrooms and dandelion leaves from just outside the cave entrance. Steve put it all into the iron skillet with some fat from the dear and some salt and herbs, then stirred it with a long-handled wooden spoon as it slowly cooked. When it was done, Steve served it onto clay plates with forks and scraps of cloth to wipe their fingers with. Bucky smacked his lips as he looked at his plate, his eyes nearly shut, and Steve grabbed cups of water to add to the meal.

“Thank you,” Bucky murmured.

“Of course,” Steve said, touching Bucky’s face. “I’m here for you, Buck.”

Bucky smiled. He picked up his fork and shifted a few cubes of meat on his plate. Steve watched him.

“There is another war,” Bucky said then. “I think… I think it might be as bad as the last one, or maybe worse. It’s young, but it’s already been several years to them.”

“The war I fought in lasted five years,” Steve murmured.

Bucky nodded slowly, then shook his head. “It’s been more than ten years to them,” he said. “And – and I don’t know what they’re fighting over. The people who prayed to me, they don’t know why their family or friends are being… Drafted? Drafted was the word?”

Steve felt his shoulders slump. “Drafted,” he repeated. “It means they’ve been compelled into military service, whether they want to or not.”

Bucky shook his head. “Lots of them don’t live in my lands,” he said. “I blessed them anyway. I don’t know who else… Who else of my kind there are to bless these people. There’s not just a war, there’s other things going wrong. I don’t understand a lot of it, there’s people talking about schools and churches and bathrooms, I don’t know.”

Steve didn’t really understand, either. He didn’t know how to explain whatever Bucky had heard. He leaned on Bucky’s shoulder and wrapped an arm around his middle.

“You do what you can,” he said.

Bucky nodded.

“There’s a forest near here that’s being cut down,” Bucky said softly. “It’s part of my domain. They’ve already started cutting it. The prayer said that they were installing some sort of building. I’m not sure.”

“We can go after you sleep,” Steve said.

“If I sleep now, it might already be gone,” Bucky then argued, suddenly pushing up. “They’re cutting down holy trees. I have to stop them.”

Steve got up, too, grabbing his tunic from the nest. Bucky downed his cup of water, then lifted Steve onto his shoulder and left the cave. Steve held onto his antlers as they stepped into a shadow, shifting across the plane.

Steve blinked as they entered a copse of trees, at night when it had been day where they’d come from. Bucky set him down and stepped through the gaps between the trees, touching the bark and frowning as though listening. Steve followed, but abruptly, the trees stopped.

They entered a clearing, but not a natural one. There were tree stumps across a field perhaps a hundred feet across. Beyond the stumps, a meadow began. Fencing had been put up with signage and several large machines had been left to wait out the night.

Bucky stopped at one nearby tree trunk, and then he made a hurt sound like he’d been struck. Steve hurried closer and touched his back, trying to comfort him. Bucky sank to his knees on the soft earth, folding over the tree stump.

“This tree was over five hundred years old,” Bucky whispered.

Steve covered his mouth in shock.

Bucky let out an animalistic roar, both in pain and anger. The roar cut into a sob. He bent over the wide stump and Steve watched a tear splash onto one of the rings.

“They don’t care!” Bucky hissed. “This tree was older than their largest cities! This tree had been here while their people had been bathing in squalor in little towns with lords and knights! This was an oak! This tree was sacred to my people, to me!”

Steve pressed closer to his back, wrapping around him. Bucky hung over the tree stump, the lost ancient oak, and sobbed again. Steve watched moss grow up around the tangled roots and the edges of the stump, creeping closer to where Bucky’s tears were wetting the wood. The moss ran over Bucky’s fingers and antlers, then began to climb his body.

“Buck,” Steve said gently, shaking him. “Bucky, please –”

Bucky lifted his head. He seemed to just then realize the moss climbing his body. He sniffled and pushed back, falling onto his haunches. Steve climbed into his lap and hugged him around the neck. Bucky clutched at him, face pressed against his hair.

“They cut down a sacred oak to build some stupid building,” Bucky whispered. “I don’t understand.”   


Steve kissed Bucky’s shoulder. He didn’t know either.

The moss began growing across the ground. Steve watched it consume each and every stump, blanketing everything in soft green. The moss grew over the machines, but did not pull them into the ground. Steve feared Bucky was too tired and too angry to destroy them.

“Wait here,” Steve said gently to Bucky.

Bucky let him slip from his arms. Steve approached the machines and climbed into them, looking around. He found wires and gears and began yanking them out, manually destroying the mechanics of the machines. There were massively sharp blades, which Steve took huge rocks to and dented. He ripped out the controls and punctured every wheel. He looked back and spotted Bucky still sitting there, despondent.

“They’ll stop,” Steve insisted, stepping back.

Bucky sighed and looked down. His face suddenly twisted into a frown and he glanced around himself. Steve frowned as well, nearing to see what Bucky was looking at, but it made itself apparent before he could get closer. 

Bright red lines began to grow, burning through the green moss and encircling Bucky. 

“What’s that?” Steve asked.

Bucky’s face fell. He stood up and tried to step out of the red circle. He was knocked back by something Steve couldn’t see.

“Run,” Bucky said softly.

Steve’s heart stopped in his chest. He ran towards Bucky, but Bucky threw out his hand and Steve was suddenly engulfed by a shadow. He shouted, sinking into the portal as sudden glowing red chains surged up and wrapped around Bucky’s body. Steve heard Bucky scream in pain again and then he was falling onto the floor of their cave.

Steve panted, collapsed onto all fours on the ground. For a moment, he just knelt there, unsure what had just happened. He looked around, expecting Bucky to appear, but only saw the fire.

Steve’s eyes grew wide in horror. He covered his mouth, tears pricking at his eyes.

The fire was down to only coals. Just a few husks of hazelnuts were left among the dying embers. Steve screamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _oh shit i forgot to tell y'all there would be hydra nonsense didn't i? make sure you jump over to chaos and princess's twitters to retweet and like their art!!!_


	10. Act IV, Scene I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _who ordered the plot with the triple serving of angst? no one? well, you're getting it anyway. ya welcs!!!_

#  **_Act IV, Scene I_ **

  
  


The fire was connected to Bucky’s life force, and if the fire was dying, that meant Bucky was dying. Steve scrambled around the cave, trying to bank the coals, adding wood, doing anything to bring the fire up again. Nothing worked. He screamed and cried some more. That did nothing. Bucky didn’t reappear. Steve didn’t know what to do.

He sank to the ground by the cave wall, clutching at his hair and staring at the dying fire. Tears were still slipping down his face, which burned from the contact.

Animals began gathering in the mouth of the cave. Steve stayed where he was, at a loss. A single fox crept into the cave. Steve watched it sniff around, as though searching for Bucky. It even climbed into the nest, but obviously found nothing. It climbed out again and looked at Steve, then made a pathetic noise, sounding a lot like a crying child.

“I don’t know,” Steve whispered brokenly. “I don’t – I don’t know what happened.”

The fox neared him. It nudged Steve’s knee, then cried again. A wolf suddenly howled, startling Steve. All the wolves caught on, then other animals began to wail and cry. Steve choked up again, covering his mouth as he watched the animals, squirrels and rabbits and reindeer and boar and bears, cried out in a din of disharmonic voices.

One red stag pushed through the crowd. The animals quieted, a few skittering mice still chirping to each other. The stag neared Steve slowly, then bumped its snout against Steve’s knee.

Steve looked at it. The stag blinked at him, then ducked its head and caught his sleeve in its teeth. It tugged, pulling Steve towards the shadow next to him. Steve lost his balance and caught himself with a palm flat against the rock, just in reach of the shadow. The deer then rumbled at him. 

“I don’t know,” Steve whispered. “I don’t – I don’t know what happened! I don’t know where to go!”

The stag rumbled at him again, sounding so much like Bucky. Steve looked at the shadow, then pushed up and just took in the shadow again. The deer bared its teeth and brayed again, then butted him gently in the side to push him towards the shadow.

“I know!” Steve snapped. “But I’m not that good at it, not the way Bucky is, and I don’t know where he is!”

A bear roared at him. The smaller animals didn’t even startle, they just joined the noise.

“I’ll try, I’ll try!” Steve shouted at them. “I don’t know how!”

The stag head-butted him again, pushing him into the shadow. Steve shut his eyes, automatically expecting the pull and squeeze of magic.

He felt a little of it. It didn’t take him anywhere.

Bucky had always been with him when shadow traveling. Steve could go a few feet just fine, he could cross the cave if he wanted, but he’d never crossed long distances the way Bucky did. And he didn’t know where the copse of trees Bucky had taken him to was.

The animals began roaring and howling again. Steve shut his eyes and screamed back at them. They quieted.

“I don’t know where he is,” Steve insisted, his voice cracking.

The animals all just looked at him. Steve didn’t know what he expected. The fire was losing its light and color by the minute.

“And time!” Steve hissed, sinking to his knees. “Time is different here, I don’t know how long I’ve been here, and I don’t know how long it’s been there! He could show up any minute, right?”

He looked around frantically. The gathered animals just looked at him.

“He’ll come back,” Steve insisted, now trying to convince himself. “Whatever – Whatever that was, he’ll break free and come back!”

Steve stepped away from the shadow and returned to the fire. He scraped the coals tighter together with a free stick and knelt there, watching it anxiously.

The animals didn’t leave. They crowded into the cave, gathered around the fire with Steve. One of the bears put its head on Steve’s knee. The stag remained standing, watching the fire.

Time passed. A few minutes, maybe an hour. Steve found himself biting his nails and cuticles. The fire didn’t catch the extra logs Steve had added. The coals just continued to dim.

Steve covered his mouth again with both hands, choking up with another sob. The stag looked at him again.

“I don’t know,” Steve hissed. “I don’t know what happened!”

The stag growled at him and stomped a hoof. Steve grabbed at his hair again, yanking on it as he groaned in frustration. He remembered what the copse had looked like, but that was all he knew. Bucky had just explained the travel as focusing on where he wanted to be and letting the magic take him the rest of the way, but Steve was still anxious that because he barely knew the location, he’d fail. And then what would happen to him? Would he be caught in limbo? He didn’t know what to do even once he got there, would Bucky still be there, would he be somewhere else? How did he find Bucky if he was gone? He had no clue.

Steve stood up and made his way to a shadow. He shut his eyes, screwing the heels of his palms into his eyes. He focused and focused, picturing the moss-covered tree stumps and the rings of the oak that had been cut down. He stepped into the depth of the shadow, felt the tug of magic and let it flow. 

Steve fell back onto his ass in the cave, head spinning and aching somewhat. He just felt confused. He’d thought that it had worked, but something had obviously gone wrong.

The stag brayed at him. Steve got up and tried again. And again. And again.

The sun set. The moon filled the cave with light. Steve kept running at the shadows, often hitting the wall and then landing on his ass. He ended up crying again, but with the coals steadily dying and Bucky nowhere in sight, Steve had to keep going. 

The stag bellowed at him as Steve failed again. Steve shook his head and just tried again.

Dawn came. Steve was exhausted. The fire was so low. He scraped the coals together as close as he could, then packed the logs around them to keep them insulated. He caught his breath, then got up and moved into the shadows again.

He was close to breaking. He focused on the tree stump that Bucky had cried over and pushed at the feeling of magic. The stag lowed and Steve felt, at last, the sucking transition of magic.

Steve opened his eyes again in a clearing of tree stumps. It was dim, nearly dawn, but all he could see was blackness. The air was thick with soot. Steve coughed and covered his mouth with his shirt, looking around with stinging eyes. The ground was black for some reason. The trees behind him were naked, dark in the night. Steve squinted at them and neared. He touched one and the brittle bark tipped. The tree fell. Steve jumped back and looked around again.

The whole copse was dead. The black color on the ground was dead moss. Steve found his breath catching his throat, but the air was so thick that he coughed. He could see lights in the distance that weren’t sunlight. Steve found the oak stump and brushed away the brittle remnants of dead moss to see the scorched earth beneath. The mark that had trapped Bucky was still there, but now black and lifeless like everything else in the clearing.

Steve didn’t know how long it had been. He needed to know, and he needed to figure out what the symbol on the earth was and if there was a way to use it to track Bucky. He needed fresh air. He stepped into a shadow and focused on what was most familiar to him; New York.

He stepped into Times Square, but it wasn’t what Steve had seen when he’d left New York in ‘43. This place was deserted, the sky was gray, the buildings looked like they’d been coated in soot. What was worse, the air was thicker than the dead forest that he’d just left and Steve found himself choking on absolutely nothing.

Sudden loudspeakers blared a siren. Steve jerked, heart pounding.

_“Air quality warning!”_ the PA system boomed. _“Asclepius Air declares the air quality of this location to be 457. All residents are advised to remain inside Asclepius Air-approved buildings or to wear Asclepius Air masks. Repeat, the air quality is currently above hazardous levels, remain indoors!”_

Steve’s eyes were watering and he was getting lightheaded. He quickly found a shadow and teleported to London.

Immediately, he found himself coughing. The air felt the same as it had been in New York. Steve turned back into the shadow and, head pounding from the poor air, moved to the first place he could think of.

Steve stepped into the front gates of Camp Lehigh. The air was thick there, but not as bad as London or New York. Steve ran for the nearest building, but it looked like the base was abandoned.

Steve broke open the door and stepped inside, coughing. The air inside was musty, but not thick with soot. He was still lightheaded but spotted a case of gas masks abandoned on a counter. Steve grabbed one and pulled it on, then took a long, deep breath.

Steve tried to step outside again. It was barely tolerable, even with the mask. Steve ran for the barracks, then slowed as he caught sight of a munitions bunker. He frowned and neared it. There shouldn’t have been a munitions bunker that close to the barracks and he didn’t remember this one being there. 

Steve peered inside a window, then shifted through a couple of shadows to get inside. There were fans running inside, keeping the bunker cool. That also didn’t make sense, if the camp was abandoned. At least the air was better. He spotted a seal in the back that he didn’t recognize, surrounded by photographs. He saw Howard Stark, and then froze as he found Peggy looking back at him from a frame.

Steve knew something was wrong here, then heard footsteps. He hastened into a nearby shadow and moved behind a massive cabinet. 

“… the doors are shut,” he heard a man say. “Nobody’s here.”

“There was a motion alert,” a woman answered.

“Did they get through Stark’s locks and put them all back and then vanish in less than sixty seconds?” the man countered.

Steve held his breath. He heard footsteps near. The shadow pulled at him and he slipped into it, moving farther away from the voices. 

“The sensor must be faulty,” the man insisted. “C’mon, we gotta get back to work.”

Steve peered out from behind his hiding space. He saw two people stepping into an elevator, which was covered by a section of the wall. Steve used the shadows to get close to the elevator and held very still as he listened. The elevator was going very low into the earth, but it eventually stopped. He waited several minutes, practically holding his breath, then took a risk and slid through the shadows to the interior of the elevator.

The elevator doors were just grates, so Steve could see into the room beyond. He heard voices, shouting, and a similar generic voice to the air quality announcement he’d heard in New York. He could see colorful boards that had moving pictures on them, like movie screens, but in color. Steve squinted at them. One of the pictures changed to the silhouette of a man with antlers and shaggy legs.

Steve’s heart jumped. There had to be a connection between the air pollution and Bucky’s disappearance, then. Of course there was! He shifted shadows, getting nearer to the room.

“The Nova Corps are still trying to get through the barricade,” a man said. “I’ve done my best to tell them that the people here are enslaved, and they seem to believe, but they also are growing tired of Hydra’s resistance.”

Steve’s heart lurched again. He couldn’t quite see into the room, couldn’t see any faces, but the screen he’d seen from the elevator was much closer.

Bucky’s picture was still on it, but he looked… Sick. Dead, somehow. His skin was drained of all color, a pasty white that nearly blended into the snow he stood amongst. His fur had turned black and was even thicker, but it looked limp and greasy. His antlers were bleached white, but striped in black. His face also bore black paint. There was a pendant hanging around his neck bearing a red pentagram.

Steve couldn’t really see his eyes, not in that photo. Yet, Bucky looked so much older.

“We know their headquarters is somewhere in Austria,” a woman insists, her voice cracking and rough. 

She had an English accent. Steve covered his mouth, trying to see where she was.

“The Winter Soldier has to be somewhere with them,” another man said.

“We don’t know that he’s working with them,” the woman from the first floor, a redhead, said.

“But we know that the air crisis was their plan! He has to be working with them in order to orchestrate it!”

“He’s got to be a pawn, at the very least, we just don’t know how Hydra is using him to destroy the plants.”

Steve sucked in a shocked breath. The room went silent at once, then he heard several guns being cocked. Steve jolted and slid into a shadow, moving across the room.

“I told you someone got in!” the woman from upstairs hissed.

“There’s no movement,” another man said.

“Then your sensors are broken, Stark!”

On this side of the room, Steve could see some of the people gathered around the large table. An old woman, her hair gray and white, sat in a wheelchair in front of the screens. Steve could see her profile. Her face was lined, but her profile… He knew it was Peggy.

“Come out with your hands up or we start shooting!” the redhead shouted. “Five!”

A man climbed onto the table and began aiming some sort of box around the room. Steve crept back into the shadows as he turned, but knew he was hidden behind the box.

“There,” the man then said, pointing in Steve’s direction.

A dozen guns turned to him. Steve shifted through the shadow across the room again. He watched the redhead kick aside the box he’d been hiding behind, then curse.

“There’s someone here!” she insisted.

“Are we sure your machines are working, Tony?” Peggy asked calmly.

Steve bit his lip, watching the back of Peggy’s head as the group argued. The redhead stalked around the room with her pistol, searching. Steve moved through the shadows when she got too close. He ended up in a corner where he could see Peggy’s face. She was so old.

“Gimme that,” the redhead said, grabbing the box from the man on the table.

“If you’re with Hydra, there’s no way any signals can be transmitted through this bunker!” the man on the table yelled. “You’re not getting out, better to come out before the Widow gets too mad!”

Steve didn’t know what any of that meant. He shifted to the shadows behind the group, then, heart pounding, removed his mask and stepped into the light.

He threw up his hands as all the guns in the room got pointed at him. Peggy turned in her chair and her jaw dropped. Steve’s knees shook as he stepped forward.

“Hi,” he said weakly.

Peggy pushed out of her wheelchair. A blonde woman startled and ran forward, trying to stop her. Peggy waved her off and staggered towards Steve. Her legs buckled a step later and both Steve and the woman rushed forward to catch her before she fell. Peggy gripped Steve’s shoulders almost painfully hard.

“What are you?” Peggy hissed.

“I’m me,” Steve told her.

“You’re supposed to be dead!” Peggy then shouted, but her voice cracked and it ended up a croak.

“I did,” Steve insisted. “I did die. But – It’s complicated.”

“Uh,” someone said. “What’s going on?”

“Sit down,” Steve told Peggy gently. “Please.”

Peggy staggered back. Steve and the blonde woman helped her back into her chair. Steve glanced around the room, but many still had guns pointed at him.

“Before you shoot me, I know where he came from,” Steve said, pointing to Bucky’s picture.

A few lowered their guns. The redhead and a black man with an eye patch kept theirs raised.

“You a Hydra deserter?” the man standing on the table asked.

“No!” Steve snapped. “I fucking _died_ to stop Hydra! Is this the same damn people?” he added, demanding of Peggy.

Peggy looked torn. “Schmidt did die,” she said. “There were others, it seems. Dr. Zola? He somehow convinced the Americans to give him citizenship in exchange for work.”

“What the fuck?” Steve said, then shook himself. “What the fuck!”

“You _died,_ ” Peggy said quietly.

Steve faltered again. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I did. I was – Resurrected, I guess? Reincarnated?”

“Who is this?” the redhead snapped. “Why aren’t we filling him full of lead!”

Steve looked up at her, then stepped into the shadow of the table. “Shoot me,” he dared.

“Natasha!” Peggy snapped.

The redhead fired. Steve sank into the shadows and came back out behind her as the bullet impaled itself in a concrete column.

“What –” someone said.

The redhead, the man in the eyepatch, and three others whipped their guns back to face Steve.

“The Winter Soldier moves like that,” a woman accused.

“The what?” Steve said. “His name is Bucky. One of his names. He’s a nature god.”

“He’s what?” the man in the eyepatch demanded.

“A nature god?” a man asked, getting up suddenly. “Tell me, shadow-traveler, what do you know of this god?”

“He’s also known as the Horned God,” Steve said. “He lives in bogs and forests, in any place where trees grow around peat bogs and the stag runs,” he added, remembering how Bucky had described it to him when he first woke up in the bog.

“This is bullshit,” the redhead hissed. “We should shoot him!”

“I’ll shadow-travel again,” Steve retorted. “You said Hydra is behind the air shit? Something captured Bucky, there was this symbol and then these glowing red chains and then he was gone. Now he’s dying.”

“It sure as hell doesn’t seem like he’s dying!” the redhead snapped at him. “He’s been killing all the plants and trees across the damn planet for forty years!”

Steve’s jaw dropped. “No,” he whispered. “No, I just – It just happened! It’s only been a day for me, it can’t have been forty – It should only have been a few weeks, maybe a few months!”

“What the fuck does that mean?” the man in the eyepatch demanded.

“Bucky has this _realm,_ ” Steve said, trying hard to put it into words. “It’s magic, it’s separate from the rest of the world, and time there goes – Slower, I guess. When he was attacked, Bucky sent me back to our home and it took me about a day to get out – You can only leave by shadow travel and I wasn’t sure where we’d been when he was caught –”

“The Winter Soldier first appeared in seventy-three,” Peggy interrupted. “In Vietnam, in the middle of a skirmish. He destroyed the whole jungle, then declared that if humanity couldn’t treat the earth with respect, then it would no longer respect them.”

Steve faltered. “Bucky wouldn’t destroy a forest,” he said. “And that’s out of his reach, he told me. Hydra has to have found a way to control him.”

“Hydra set up the air crisis!” the man on the table shouted. “I told you, they engineered the whole damn thing! This deer-man is their pawn!”

“And he’s dying!” Steve snapped. “There’s an eternal fire in his realm, it’s connected to his life force, and it’s nothing but coals now.”

“The whole planet is dying,” the man in the eyepatch said. “There’s an eternal winter and it snows ash every day.”

“The only people who can provide clean air to breathe are Asclepius,” the blonde at her shoulder added. “They’re a front for Hydra. They’ve been poisoning the air slowly over generations with a mind-control drug. There’s only a few people, like us, that have gotten off the drugs.”

“Where is your body?” Peggy cut in.

Steve looked at her, faltering again. She stared back at him coldly.

“Where?” she asked. “You said you’d died and been brought back. That’s not your body, so where is it?”

“Ireland, somewhere,” Steve said softly. “I – I could take you to it.”

Peggy nodded to the woman at her shoulder.

“Aunt Peggy, you can’t be serious,” she said.

“Push me to him,” Peggy snapped. “Can you take us? The Winter Soldier can move people through shadows, so you should be able to as well, right?”

Steve grimaced. “I can try,” he said. “I’ve never… Done it?”

“Try,” Peggy demanded.

The woman, her niece, pushed her to Steve, then handed out masks. Steve examined his skeptically, but put it on. The others in the room backed up. Steve took the two women’s hands, then grimaced at the shadows at his feet.

“Okay,” he said, steeling himself.

He remembered that bog in great detail. He shut his eyes and when the magic pulled at him, he pulled Peggy and her niece with him. He heard Peggy gasp, the niece let out a garbled curse, and the magic released them with a splash.

“Oh, fuck,” the niece whispered. 

Steve opened his eyes. The bog was covered in a layer of gray snow, but the water was still flowing. It was blackened, however. Steve looked around, his heart breaking. He bent and touched the cracked husk of moss and tried to bring it back to life. A little bit of green came into it. 

The niece grabbed his arm and yanked him back. “Don’t do that,” she snapped. “The Winter Soldier will feel it and come kill us.”

Steve glanced up, horrified. “Kill?” he repeated.

“Your body,” Peggy demanded.

Steve straightened up. He looked around, then began to walk. He remembered where he’d first opened his eyes, the raised bank where Bucky had formed him from the moss and peat. He found it, then brushed at the exposed peat where his former body would have been.

Peggy got out of her wheelchair. Her niece helped her closer. Steve dug through the peat, then caught his fingers on fabric.

“Oh,” Steve murmured, brushing peat away.

His body hadn't decayed much, not even in the apparent 70 years it had been resting in the bog. Steve didn’t know how to feel exposing his dead body to the air, but he uncovered the head and face. The neck was bent at an unnatural angle. It made Steve feel a little sick.

“Oh my god,” the niece whispered.

“How is it –” Peggy whispered.

Steve shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. 

The body looked dead, certainly. The skin was sunken in, like the moisture had left it and seeped into the earth around it. The old suit hung on the bones loosely. The hair was nearly gone.

“Are you done?” Steve asked, wanting to replace the earth.

Peggy nodded. Steve quickly scraped the peat back into place, covering his former self. He pushed up, brushing the peat from his hands.

“How –” Peggy started. “How are you –”  
  


“Bucky,” Steve said quietly. “He made a new body for me. From this,” he added, plucking peat from his nails. “And breathed life into it. I guess – Kinda like God did to Adam in the Bible.”

“But you –” Peggy started again. “How are _you_ in _that_ body?”

Steve shrugged. “I just am,” he said. 

Peggy looked away from him. He couldn’t see her face through the mask. 

“Let’s go back,” she said.

Steve helped her niece help Peggy back to the chair. Steve wiped his hands on his pants before taking theirs and pulling them back through the shadows.

“Jesus –!” someone shouted as they reappeared.

“Who is this Jesus?”

“Quiet,” Peggy snapped. “I believe Steve.”

“What, he shows you some bones and you accept that he’s actually Captain America?” the man on the table asked.

“That’s Tony,” Peggy said to Steve perfunctorily. “Tony Stark. Howard had a child, yes.”

Steve grimaced at Tony Stark. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I hope Howard was less of an asshole when you came along.”

Tony Stark blinked at him. “Oh,” he said. “Um. He was still an asshole.”

“Sorry,” Steve repeated.

“He’s now dead,” Peggy added shortly. “The Winter Soldier killed him. This is my niece, Sharon,” she continued, “and this is Nicholas Fury, he’s my second-in-command.”

The man in the eyepatch nodded, but didn’t put away his gun. Steve didn’t blame him.

“Natasha Romanoff, codename the Black Widow,” Peggy added, waving to the redhead. “Clint Barton, codename Hawkeye,” to a man holding a compound bow, “Maria Hill, third-in-command.”

Hill had put away her gun by then. Natasha Romanoff and Nick Fury were the only ones without their weapons put away.

“Sam Wilson,” Peggy continued, pointing still. “He’s former Asclepius Air. Search and rescue until he found evidence they were drugging people. Doctor Banner, James Rhodes, both also former Asclepius. Those two are twins –” she pointed to a pair of kids, who looked far too young to be involved in this sort of shit, “Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, they were experimental child soldiers we rescued from Hydra.”

“Child _what?_ ” Steve spat out.

“Soldiers,” Peggy said calmly. “Doctors Hank and Janet Pym, former Asclepius, their daughter Hope, Scott Lang, and Brunnhilde and Thor.”

She finished on the man who had called Steve “Shadow-traveler.”

“He’s actually also a god,” Peggy said calmly. “From Asgard.”  
  


Steve looked Thor up and down. Thor held out his hand.

“We were regarded as gods by the people of Midgard long ago,” he said, “but my people are actually just an advanced civilization.”

Steve gingerly shook Thor’s hand. “Alright,” he said.

“We’re just accepting this guy?” Romanoff snapped at Peggy. “That’s it?”

“Tony, do you happen to know what happens to dead bodies when they land in bogs?” Peggy asked, ignoring Romanoff. “And why, perhaps, they would look freshly dead today if they had been dead for seventy years?”

“The water is highly anaerobic,” Stark explained at once. “Organic matter gets practically mummified when it’s submerged in bogs. That’s why we have bodies from the Iron Age that are so well-preserved. Actually, those bodies are thought to be pagan sacrifices –”

He stopped, suddenly looking at Steve.

“Pagan sacrifices?” he repeated questioningly.

Steve thought back, then nodded. “I guess,” he said. “Bucky said humans left him sacrifices in the old days.”

“Holy shit,” Stark muttered.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Romanoff broke in, jerking her gun back up at Steve. “We’re accepting him with no proof!”

“I saw proof,” Peggy said. “Put it away.”

Steve waited, ready to sink into the shadow. Romanoff grimaced. Fury put a hand on her arm and she finally lowered the gun.

“What symbol did you see?” Peggy asked, grabbing paper and a pencil. “Here.”  
  


Steve grabbed it and began sketching it out. Peggy tapped a nail against the table as she watched Steve drawing. Thor and Brunnhilde moved nearer. Stark sat down on the table in front of Steve’s drawing.

“These look like one of Strange’s symbols,” Stark said.

“Not done,” Steve replied. “Patience.”

He heard Stark grumble and ignored it. Steve pulled back, automatically biting the end of the pencil as he tried to remember what else had been in the symbol.

“Stop that,” Peggy scolded, flicking his wrist.

Steve yanked the pencil from his lips, flushing in shame. Peggy tapped the paper.

“I think that’s it,” Steve muttered. “I could go back and check?”

“We should send Strange with him,” Sharon added.

“Who?” Steve asked, glancing up.

“Doctor Strange,” Peggy said simply. “I agree. He might be able to explain it.”

“Where is he?” Steve asked, looking around.

“He’ll show up soon,” Peggy said. “Tony, scan that and make it big.”

Stark grabbed the paper and jumped off the table. Steve looked back up at the many screens, facing Bucky’s picture again. His shoulders drooped.

“Forty years,” he whispered. “Fuck…”

“If he is what you say,” Thor replied to Steve’s murmur, “then perhaps he is not aware of what he has been doing. My grandfather told stories when I was a lad about beings more powerful than us that lived permanently in Midgard, beings that walked with animal-like features similar to your friend.”

Steve glanced at him. “Bucky does remember that there used to be more people like him,” he said, “but he said they’d all fallen asleep and it’s been so long, he doesn’t remember where or who they were.”

Thor nodded slowly. “I believe you,” he said, looking down at Steve then. “It explains why the Winter Soldier can manipulate organic matter so easily.”

“If he’s a nature god?” Romanoff retorted. “Or, maybe he’s a front and Hydra have been killing plants chemically like they do everything else.”

“He’s not dead yet,” Steve insisted, touching his own heart like he thought he could feel Bucky’s pulse beating alongside his own. “So he’s doing something. If it’s chemical or magic, it doesn’t matter. If I can break whatever is holding him hostage, then he can reverse the damage to the planet.”

“How?” Romanoff demanded. “Is he going to prance around and grow trees and grass magically overnight? The planet is poisoned beyond repair. Even if we _could_ start growing trees again, the soil around the world is so chemically damaged by the forty fucking years of pollutant build-up that there’s nowhere clean enough left to fix it.”

“He _will_ grow it magically,” Steve insisted. “That’s the whole point, he’s a nature god.”

Romanoff looked away, shaking her head. “We’re better off getting the barricade down so the Nova Corps can start evacuating the planet,” she said. 

“Who?” Steve asked, frowning again. 

“They’re from the planet Xandar,” Thor explained, “they’ve been trying for a few months now to land on the planet, but Hydra shoots down every vessel they send.”

Steve glanced at Peggy, jaw hanging open. Peggy lifted a shoulder.

“There’s life beyond Earth and death,” she said calmly. “And gods of bogs, apparently.”

The screens in front of them suddenly changed, becoming filled with Steve’s drawing. Steve jolted, startled by the sudden transition. He looked around, but didn’t see projectors.

“Don’t question it,” Peggy told him.

“Strange’ll be here any minute,” Stark said, sitting down on the other side of the table. “He’ll be fucking jazzed to know Hydra had magicians like him, he’s been saying that the pentagram thing the Winter Soldier wears is something magical for months.”

“Good for him,” Fury said. “And good for the Soldier, but we still have to deal with Hydra; they’ve got everyone breathing their air and brainwashing them.”

“Where’s their headquarters?” Steve asked, glancing between Fury and Peggy.

“In the Alps, but the snow there is so thick we can’t get through it with scans,” Peggy said. 

“You said Strange works for Asclepius, could he get through to the base?” Steve pushed.

“No, Hydra is buried really fucking deep in Asclepius,” Stark said. “Maybe he could get into the base with magic if we knew where it was! But we don’t.”

“Magic what?” a new voice called.

Steve jerked around as a man walked out of nowhere, but he hadn't heard the elevator.

“He teleports,” Stark said before Steve could open his mouth. “Hey, buddy, guess what? Our Winter Soldier pal is actually the Horned God and seventy years ago he reincarnated Captain America, who’s now here!”

Strange blinked. He looked at Steve, eyebrows raising. Steve shrank a little, feeling uncomfortable.

“And we _believe_ that?” Strange asked.

“Yes,” Peggy cut in. “Look at that symbol, Strange. It’s what captured the Soldier in the first place.”

Strange neared the screens, stroking a thin beard. Steve stood there, unsure what else to do. Strange hummed.

“I think I recognize this style,” he said. “It’s older than what we use, and certainly darker. You’re saying the Soldier was originally a good guy?”

“He’s the Horned God,” Steve insisted. “A nature god. He lives in bogs and forests where the stag runs.”

“Sounds like the vague bullshit that goes with ancient pagan gods,” Strange replied. “Where did you see this?”

“When he was captured, this appeared under him,” Steve said. “Then there were these glowing red chains. He sent me back to our home through the shadows, so that’s all I saw.”

“It’s still on the ground apparently,” Peggy answered.

Strange grabbed two masks, holding one out to Steve. “Where is this place?”

“I’ll take us,” Steve answered, holding out his hand.

“I use portals,” Strange told him, already putting on the mask. “Just tell me where it is.”

Steve put the mask on and then took Strange’s arm. He stepped into a shadow without any further words. Strange swore and they appeared in the clearing.

“Shit,” Strange muttered.

“Here,” Steve said, pulling him towards the mark. “This tree had been just cut down. It was over five hundred years old. Bucky was crying, then the symbol appeared and he sent me through the shadows back home.”

Strange climbed onto the stump to get a better look. Steve hugged himself, feeling emotionally numb. He just wanted to get Bucky back. He had no idea how.

“I know what this is,” Strange said. “Follow me.”

He moved his hands and something orange appeared in the air, opening into a circle of sparks. Steve walked around it and saw through the circle like a window into a new room. Strange went through, so Steve followed. They stepped into a library and Strange went through the bookshelves. Steve just continued to follow.

“Yes,” Strange muttered, taking a book down without actually touching it. “Yes, I knew I recognized it. It’s dark magic, really dark. I don’t even think Hydra realizes what they’re practicing.”

“What is it?” Steve asked, stepping nearer. 

“It’s old chaos magic,” Strange said, showing him pages in the book. It was all in symbols he didn’t recognize, however. “Probably as old as your nature friend. Here –”

He waved a hand. Steve turned and saw another book floating through the air to them. Strange flicked his fingers and it opened to a middle page, showing a drawing of a large man with the legs of a goat and head of a stag.

“Beings like this haven’t been seen by wizards in centuries,” Strange said. “Probably not since the start of the millennium.”

Steve took the book. It wasn’t written in English either, but he flipped through the pages. There were other drawings, beings with animal heads and feet. Strange showed him the first book again.

“This is the sigil,” Strange said. “It only bound and captured him, it couldn’t’ve enslaved his mind. Unless they captured him and then convinced him to follow their plan.”

“He wouldn’t do this willingly,” Steve insisted. “We were trying to stop humans from destroying forests and wetlands by covering their equipment in plants, he wouldn’t kill the world’s plants.”

“What?” Strange countered. “Equipment? Plants?”

“I don’t know what year it was,” Steve admitted, “but it was a handful of locations between the mid-50s and 70s, I guess.”

Strange took out a box from his jacket pocket. The front of it lit up and he squinted at it for a moment, then he shoved it in Steve’s face and showed him a picture of a peat-farm and all its equipment covered in moss.

“Like that?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Steve said. “That looks like one of the places we went to.”

Strange nodded, putting the box away. “I guess they had to take over his head, then,” he said, flipping through the book again. “I don’t know how you would do that to an Old God, though, not even with magic like this.”

Steve just shrugged, his gaze falling back to the book in his hands. “He’s dying,” he said softly.

“What do you mean?” Strange asked.

“His life force is draining,” Steve insisted. “Where we live, it’s separate from the rest of the world. Time flows differently. There’s a fire there, it’s bound to him. When people pray to him, it’s how he hears them and answers them. But it’s down to just coals.”

Strange frowned heavily. “That’s not good,” he said.

“No,” Steve answered, letting out a weak laugh.

His chest felt like it’s cracking. He broke into a sob and sank to the floor, holding the book of drawings close to him. Strange made a confused noise as Steve tried to catch his breath. Strange bent and patted his shoulder.

“It’ll be okay,” he said.

“I told him to start pushing back against the humans,” Steve confessed in a hoarse croak. “I told him to go back and fight them! They wouldn’t’ve realized he existed at all, they wouldn’t’ve been able to catch him if I hadn't made him fight them!”

“I guess,” Strange said.

Steve covered his face and screamed. Strange jolted a bit.

“If I hadn't landed in his fucking bog,” Steve whispered, “if he had just let me die! None of this would’ve happened!”

“Right,” Strange said. “Well, I don’t have enough information to comfort you on this, so, we’re gonna go back to headquarters and I’m gonna try to figure out what spell is binding your friend.”

Strange just pulled Steve to his feet and then through another magic window. Steve stumbled on the other side. Peggy eyed him worriedly.

“There’s another volcanic eruption in Indonesia,” Stark said as they appeared. “Ash cloud seems to be reaching Japan.”

“Jesus,” Strange sighed. “Okay. Asclepius will be dumping more depressants into the masks, then.”

Steve sank into a chair, still holding the book of Old Gods. Thor neared him.

“Can you tell us more about the Horned God?” he asked softly.

Steve shrugged. He didn’t know what to say.

“How to defeat him, maybe?” Brunnhilde asked.

Steve squeezed his eyes shut and covered them with a hand. He could feel Peggy watching him.

“Maybe if I got him back to our cave,” Steve mumbled. “Maybe that would break whatever’s on him?”

“Probably not,” Strange cut in. “It takes some pretty powerful fucking magic to enslave the mind of an Old God, remember.”

Steve felt like screaming and crying again. He covered his face with both hands.

“But I know what school of magic they’re using,” he heard Strange saying. “It’s old and it’s incredibly dangerous, so our best bet might be figuring out how to kill him.”

“No!” Steve shouted, jumping up.

Everyone looked at him. The room was quiet.

“There might be nothing left of him,” Strange pointed out, as if telling Steve that they didn’t have enough flour or eggs for a cake. “He might just be the spells Hydra has him under.”  
  


“You _cannot_ kill him,” Steve insisted angrily. “He needs to go home. The world still needs him, I – I need him.”

Strange glanced around. Peggy was looking at Steve with pity. He couldn’t look back at her. He clenched his fists, his jaw tight. Peggy never knew about his… about his sexuality. He couldn’t say in front of this room full of strangers _and_ her that he needed Bucky to come home because he loved him. He couldn’t force the words out of his mouth.

“We’re forgetting that the real problem is Hydra,” Romanoff cut into the silence. “And that the planet is no longer liveable.”

“We break the spell on Bucky, he can heal the planet,” Steve said through gritted teeth. “Then there won’t be a need for Hydra’s air anymore.”

“We should focus on taking out Hydra and the barricade,” Romanoff insisted. “Forget the Winter Soldier, let him have the planet. If we can evacuate –”

“And let Bucky suffer for the rest of time?” Steve interrupted her. “Just let him succumb to human greed? He’s been slowly dying because of you fucking people since you discovered how to make fire, now that there’s no way to keep exploiting the damn place, you just want to abandon it and let its magic die? Is there no end to humanity’s selfishness?!”

“You’re human,” Stark answered Steve’s outburst softly.

“I came out of the earth,” Steve snapped at him. “I’m all that Bucky has left, and Bucky is all the earth has! You selfish assholes can all choke and die, I don’t care, but I’m saving Bucky!”

Steve stepped into a shadow as Peggy gasped. If they didn’t care, he didn’t care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _hehehe you're weeelcooome_


	11. Act IV, Scene II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _okay imma be honest i went to hit preview and accidentally hit post so here you go_

#  **_Act IV, Scene II_ **

  
  


Sharon had said that Bucky would appear if someone grew new plants. Steve returned to the clearing where he’d been captured and brushed the ash and brittle moss off of a patch of dirt. His vision was clouding by tears, but he knelt down and set his hands on the soil. He could feel the magic in the earth, it was weak, but it was alive still. He let it gather under his hands, then focused on grass. Steve watched the soil tremble a bit under his focus. His forehead broke out in sweat, but he stayed where he was. 

A single blade of grass pushed through the dirt. Steve stopped to take several deep breaths, then tried again. It grew an inch, then shriveled and turned black. Steve yelled and brushed away the brittle leaf, then tried again. This had the same result. It died before it could grow stronger. 

Orange sparks appeared in front of him. Steve ignored it, trying again to grow grass. Peggy in her wheelchair went through. The portal closed again behind her.

“It won’t work,” Peggy said gently.

“It will,” Steve growled as the grass between his hands blackened yet again.

“The soil is too damaged,” Peggy insisted. “And the air is too toxic. Even if you can grow it magically, it will just keep dying.”

“Then I’ll stay here and keep trying until Bucky finds me,” Steve snapped. “I’ll take him home and break the spell on him there. You people can do what you want, abandon the planet, fine. I’m saving Bucky.”

“There is nothing left to save,” Peggy said. “Earth is destroyed. Humanity didn’t do this, Hydra did. Please, Steve. Come home with me.”

Steve shook his head. Again, his grass shriveled up and died.

“We have a plan to disrupt the barricade,” Peggy added. “The Nova Corps will come through and evacuate us. There’s an uninhabited planet not far from here that’s very similar to Earth, the governments out there have granted humanity permission to settle there.”

“How long before you destroy it, too?” Steve growled.

Peggy sighed. “I think it’s fair to say that we’ve learned our lesson,” she said. “And we now have protections and new technology in place to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”

“How does technology stop greed?” Steve demanded, now looking up at her. “How do you account for the fact that in order to _get_ that technology, people had to die and suffer and the world had to be destroyed? Everything that’s happened in the last hundred years, the last two hundred years, has been selfish humans disrespecting the planet or each other. How do you account for that?”

“What about the good people?” Peggy snapped back. “The men like you?”

Steve opened his mouth and faltered. He looked down.

“I don’t know,” he muttered.

“Come back with me,” Peggy repeated. “We’ll defeat Hydra and evacuate. Then we can discuss saving your friend. But there’s no way to save him if everyone is dead or drugged to death.”

Steve scowled and looked away. He reached up to wipe the sweat and tears from his face, but his wrist came in contact with the mask. He growled under his breath.

“Come on,” Peggy insisted.

“I’m going to save Bucky,” Steve snapped as he stood up. “Evacuate, fine. I’m staying here until Bucky’s out of Hydra’s grip.”

“Fine,” Peggy sighed.

Strange’s orange portal opened again. Steve pushed Peggy’s wheelchair back through it.

“Are you finished with your tantrum?” Romanoff asked.

Steve bared his teeth at her and growled. She raised her eyebrows, undaunted.

“Hydra has a series of orbital weapons spread across the planet,” Peggy just began, rolling up to the table and picking up a thin box. “They’re automated to shoot at anything that gets near. There’s a weak point at each of the planet’s poles, but if we can get into Hydra’s base, we can find their computers and disable them from the ground.”

“Do you have pictures of it?” Steve asked flatly.

Peggy did something on the box in her hands, and the screens above them changed, showing a snowy mountain and what looked like windows set into the rock.

“We managed to steal this from some of their data,” she said, as the picture zoomed in on the windows. “We’ve tried to analyze where this rock formation is, but we haven’t found it yet.”

Steve could see a shadow just inside the window. He got close to the screen, squinting at the surroundings, then just stepped into the shadow of the table. 

He appeared in a large room, a laboratory of sorts, standing behind a filing cabinet. He heard voices. Steve looked around, getting the layout of the room, then slid back through the shadow to Peggy’s base.

“Where did you just go?” Peggy demanded.

Steve pointed. “Behind a filing cabinet,” he said. “That’s a lab. It has old tech from the War, things Hydra used against us when they were still part of the Nazis.”

The whole room stared at him.

“Can you take me?” Stark demanded, scrambling to get down from the table.

“Wait, you need cover,” Romanoff said hastily.

Steve took both of their hands. Stark swore loudly as he pulled them through the shadow.

“Be quick,” Steve hissed, crossing the room to peer through the only doorway.

Stark ran up to a blocky radio. Romanoff followed Steve, her gun raised. There were people down the hallway, but not coming nearer.

“Okay, back to base!” Stark called in a whisper-shout.

Steve waved him over, still watching the hallway. Stark tip-toed to them and Steve gripped both his and Romanoff’s arms. He stepped back through a shadow and they re-entered Peggy’s base.

“And?” Peggy demanded.

“I know where those fuckers are!” Stark shouted. “I sent a virus into their computers, it’s uploading everything they have to me now.”

“They won’t find it, right?” Fury asked.

“No, that’s the point,” Stark insisted, tapping at something. “Check it out. They’re in the Alps.”

Steve frowned as the screens above them changed to show a map of Europe. A red dot appeared and the map expanded, magnifying itself. Steve touched the screen, surprised by the warm glass.

“That’s near where the train was,” he said quietly.

“What?” Peggy called. “My hearing is going, darling, you have to speak up.”

Steve lowered his hand. “Zola’s train,” he explained. “When I lost the Howlies. This must be where Zola was going.”

He heard Peggy sigh softly. Steve started to cross himself out of habit, then stopped, remembering he was practically a heathen now. He lowered his hand.

“I’m surprised they’re using that place,” Fury spoke up, “wouldn’t you have it on your books?”

“No, we never found it,” Peggy said. “We intercepted the Valkyrie and Steve had the dumb idea to –”  
  


“Sneak on by myself,” Steve finished for her, remembering it well. “Feels like a few weeks ago…”

“Seventy years, roughly,” Peggy said.

Steve shrugged. “Time worked different with Bucky,” he repeated. “This base might have Bucky,” he added, looking up with a firm expression. “I’m going back and I’m gonna find him.”

“Can your virus mess with their computers?” Romanoff asked Stark.

“No, but I can send another through it,” Stark explained.

“We can alter the barricade that way, then,” Romanoff said. “Maybe crash the satellites into each other?”

“Or make them think that they’re receiving information but send them something fake,” Stark agreed.

“I’m going after Bucky,” Steve repeated loudly. “Now.”

“You’re gonna tip them off,” Barton cut in. “You should wait.”

“Or start over on my job,” Steve snapped. “Which I pretty much took care of seventy years ago, but I guess they really meant that Hydra two heads shit.”

“They’ve been around a lot longer than when we knew them,” Peggy said.

“I don’t care,” Steve answered flippantly. “You do your – your virus, whatever, thing and get the Nova Corps in. I’m finding Bucky and we’ll bring the trees back.”

“Good luck,” Romanoff scoffed.

“You could probably use backup,” Hil said. “Romanoff, Barton, wanna go?”

“They’ll only slow me down,” Steve answered.

“Or save your ass,” Barton answered. “How’s that shadow shit feel, Nat?”

“Like you’re being sucked into a three-inch tube,” Romanoff answered. “You’ll like it.”

Barton laughed. Steve rolled his eyes.

“Aha!” Stark shouted abruptly. “Here are their satellites!”

“I’m going,” Steve announced, backing into a shadow.

“Wait, hold on!” Strange called. “Hold on, listen, you don’t know how to break him from Hydra’s control, just wait.”

“I’ll figure it out,” Steve insisted.

Strange gripped Steve’s shoulder. “Let me keep researching, alright? It really won’t take that long, and it’s not like it can get worse.”  
  


“But he’s dying!” Steve snapped, jerking away from Strange. “He could die at any moment, and you want me to just _sit here_ while you read a book?”

“Why _don’t_ you sit down?” Romanoff offered. “We need to focus on the barricade.”

Steve growled under his breath, stalking away from the table. The group continued talking behind him, loudly and explosively on Stark’s behalf. Steve kicked a box angrily.

He heard the squeak of wheels and turned. Peggy was rolling herself over, not pushed by her niece.

“Why don’t you sit on that?” Peggy offered.

“I don’t want to,” Steve snapped. “I should go.”

“Be patient,” Peggy stressed. “Strange will do everything he can to save your friend.”

Steve turned his face away from her, shaking his head. His chest was tight with anxiety, but all he really felt was anger.

“I’m sorry the world came to this,” Peggy added softly. “You died to save us from a horrible fate… We just made it worse.”

Steve felt a little bit of guilt. He sighed, sinking onto the top of the box. Peggy was looking at him with old regret. And a little bit of longing, but he wondered if he was imagining that.

“It’s Hydra’s fault,” Steve admitted. “They did this. I guess they – They regrouped after the war and caught onto what Bucky and I were doing and realized they could use him. We got a prayer about the location that Bucky was captured from, that it was a sacred grove and people were logging it. It was a trap.”

“I’m sorry,” Peggy said gently.

Steve just nodded. It was his fault. He pushed Bucky into retaliating against the humans.

“We’ll do our best to free him,” Peggy said. “Then – Well. You’re young now, I’m not.”

Steve’s chest tightened again. He nodded slowly.

“You can come with us to the new planet,” Peggy offered. “I doubt after the chaos of the past few decades, anyone will question your living.”  
  


“Maybe,” Steve muttered, his shoulders drawing up.

“It’ll take a lot of work to rebuild our societies,” Peggy added. “After the plants were killed, a lot of people died. There were more than three billion people in 1970, but there’s just under four million now.”

Steve didn’t know what to say about that. He’d never thought the world could hold so many people, even alive and healthy.

“The new planet doesn’t have a name yet,” Peggy added. “The Nova Corps call it N dash 876. Stark thinks we should name it after him, since he’s going to be the one taking down the barricade to get the Nova Corps to us.”

“Sounds like a Stark,” Steve muttered.

“I actually thought to name it after you,” Peggy added. “Since you tried so hard to stop Hydra.”

Steve sighed and looked away. “Don’t do that,” he asked. “I don’t want any more fame.”

“Alright,” Peggy agreed gently.

“Name it Oz,” Steve suggested with a smile, wondering if she’d know by then what Oz and Dorothy meant to men like him.

“Perhaps,” Peggy mused.

“Aunt Peggy!” Sharon called. “Tony thinks Hydra’s got nukes everywhere!”

Steve lifted his head sharply. He got up and helped Peggy turn around her wheelchair, pushing it back to the table. The screens had maps on them again, but showing major cities; Steve couldn’t count them, but they ranged across the world.

“I’m pretty sure they’ve got nukes buried around every city,” Stark said. “This looks like a suicide plan, boss, even their base is covered.”

“Fuck,” Peggy answered. “We have to disable them before we can let the Nova Corps in, or they might detonate while we’re evacuating.”

“You have to burn the whole thing to the ground,” Steve said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Cut one head off, two more will grow back. You can’t let anyone escape.”

“That’s a lot of killing for a handful of people,” Barton commented.

“We don’t even know how many people are involved with Hydra, or are just pawns of Asclepius,” Hill pointed out.

“We should try to disable their nukes or change the detonation sequence on them,” Stark said. “Something achievable like that.”

“Or find out how their agents don’t get hit by their drugs,” Dr. Banner added. “People breathe the same air without masks in shelters all over the world. Then isolate Hydra members by that.”

Steve shook his head, looking away. He sat down and massaged his eyes. Dr. Pym stepped near him and gently touched his shoulder.

“Are you alright, dear?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Steve muttered quickly. “Fine. Thanks.”

Dr. Pym squeezed his shoulder. “It’ll work out,” she said gently. “We’re going to win.”

Steve just nodded, not sure if he believed her.

#  **_*_ **

Steve stayed with Peggy and her people despite his misgivings. Her base was a lot bigger than he’d thought; big enough to have full living quarters, with bedrooms and kitchens and everything. 

People ate algae now, apparently. It was synthetically produced and tasted like shit. Steve was tempted to shadow-travel back to his and Bucky’s cave just for a good meal, but worried that years might pass again if he went back.

Peggy kept asking him to join the new colony. He couldn’t tell her no, but he couldn’t tell her yes.

Strange poured over old books for days, doing magic Steve didn’t recognize and getting more and more frustrated. The rest of the group focused on helping Stark develop two computer viruses; one to disable the weapons in space and one for the weapons in the ground. Most of Peggy’s people went out daily, some masquerading as part of Asclepius, some just flat out spying.

Steve was stuck underground. He’d stick out like a sore thumb in the shelters.

It took six days for Strange to say he’d found a way to break the spell.

“Eureka,” he said blandly. “There’s a chance it won’t work, which means that there’s probably nothing of the guy behind the spells to save.”

“We have to try,” Steve insisted.

Strange shrugged. “Your funeral.”

The north of Russia had the cleanest soil. Strange and Steve went with Barton and Romanoff to a snowy hillside where the East Siberian taiga used to be. Strange drew a sigil similar to the one Hydra used to capture Bucky, then covered it with snow. He and the others hid using magic while Steve knelt down in the sigil brush snow away from the ground.

He focused on the weak magic left in the earth. It wanted to grow, and Steve just encouraged it. A small green shoot appeared, pushing slowly through the dark soil.

It started to shake. Steve grimaced as the cold and the poisons in the soil fought the magic and him, but he refused to give up. It got to about four inches tall and a single leaf sprouted from its tip.

And then the whole ground shook. Steve lost his concentration and the sapling shriveled and died. The earth groaned, an angry sound, and – his heart was going to break his ribs, it was beating so fast – a hulking figure stepped out from behind the shadow of a dead tree.

Steve’s heart stopped. It was Bucky, but it wasn’t him. His eyes were nothing but black.

“Buck –” Steve called weakly.

Bucky let out an unearthly roar that shook Steve to his bones. He charged, his head down like he planned to gore Steve with his antlers. Steve fell back onto his ass, still in the sigil, and shut his eyes as the roar tore through the dead forest with ferocity. Steve cracked his eyes open just before Bucky crossed the sigil, and –

Bucky froze in it, his roar cutting in his throat. He growled and looked around, struggling to move his feet as the sigil below them glowed. Strange appeared and orange symbols appeared in the air around them as he began to chant loudly. Bucky roared again. Steve tried to grab Bucky’s leg.

Bucky backhanded him in the chest. Steve went flying. He hit a dead tree and the air was knocked from his lungs. His vision spinning, he saw Bucky swipe at Strange, who dived out of the way, then break out of the sigil and dive into the shadows.

Steve sank to the snowy ground. Strange pushed to his feet. Romanoff and Barton appeared, their faces grim behind their masks.

“Well,” Strange said, his voice tired and soft. “We tried.”

Steve shook his head. “No,” he whispered. “No, no, there – there has to be something else! He must have broken through it before your spells could work! We can still save him!”

Strange brushed snow off him. “Sure, kid,” he answered in a tone that clearly conveyed he didn’t believe. “C’mon. Let’s get out of here before he comes back.”

Steve hung his head. Barton gripped his shoulder comfortingly as they followed Strange through his portal back to base.

“We have to try again,” Steve insisted. “Maybe your sigil was done wrong.”

“Maybe so,” Strange replied with a sigh.

They tried again. Bucky broke free and ran. 

“Face it, buddy,” Strange told Steve. “Whatever friend you had in him, he’s all gone. He’s just Hydra’s monster now.”

Steve walked away so no one could see him cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _there are 2 or 3 more chapters coming out, maybe going until the 19th but no later than that_


	12. Act IV, Scene III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _short chapter, but big plot_

#  **_Act IV, Scene III_ **

  
  


“We can’t keep chasing him, Steve,” Peggy told him in a soft voice. “I know you want to save him, but… It’s clear that you can’t. You need to let go.”

Steve shook his head hard, hand covering the lower half of his face.

“We really could use you here,” Peggy added. “We have to go after the bombs in person, Doctor Strange can use portals to transport us, but with your powers, that gets doubled. There are 30, placed all over the world.”

Steve bit one of his knuckles, still shaking his head. 

“There’s a storm coming,” Peggy insisted. “Hydra’s sensors will be disrupted. Tony has a virus in place to keep them from realizing the nukes are being disarmed, we’ll go in and disable them permanently, then Tony will break the blockade from the ground and the Nova Corps will land, from the end of the last nuke being disarmed, it should take twenty minutes.”

Steve exhaled and looked down. 

“Please,” Peggy said. “We need your help.”

“I –” Steve started. “Pegs…”

Peggy looked at him plainly. Steve sat down, head in his hands, and Peggy reached up to touch his shoulder.

“You’ve always done the right thing,” she said. “Please. The world needs you again.”

“Fine,” Steve murmured. “Show me where to go.”

#  **_*_ **

Tony had access to camera feeds for all of the bunkers containing the warheads. When the storm, which was some sort of solar or electrical or something Steve didn’t really understand, broke out, that disrupted Hydra’s electronics enough for Tony to start sending them false security footage from each of the 30 bunkers. Tony stayed at his computers, while the rest of them teamed up to disable the bombs. Strange took the Doctors Pym, as well as Maria Hill and Fury. Steve took Doctor Banner and Hope Pym as well as Natalia Romanoff and Clint Barton. Two people would stand guard, while the other two would install a program Tony developed to break down the onboard computers, then they’d move onto the next one.

Romanoff still didn’t trust him, he could tell, but she trusted him enough to transport them to the nuclear bunkers.

“Ready?” Tony called to each group.

“Ready,” Strange said.

“Ready,” Romanoff answered.

“Three,” Tony started, hand pointing to them to count the time. “Two.”

Steve reached out to get a hold of everyone he was taking. Bruce and Hope gripped his hands while Clint and Romanoff gripped his shoulders.

“One,” Tony finished. “Go!”

Steve sank into the shadows as Strange summoned his portal. They each had 15 warheads to disarm and they had a short window to do it in, before the storm passed and Hydra noticed their security cameras were on loop. 

They appeared in the first bunker. Bruce and Hope ran to start disabling it while Clint and Romanoff took up protective stances, watching the entrance. Steve hovered near them all, watching Bruce and Hope picking at wires and plugging in things, talking over the process with things he didn’t really understand. He looked up, scanning the bunker, and realized that the silo next to him wasn’t just a silo.

That was the warhead. Steve’s eyes widened. He’d seen a few nuclear warheads during the war, but nothing this big. It was as big as a warship, standing maybe fifty feet tall and nearly as wide as a building. 

“Wow,” he whispered.

“Yeah,” Clint agreed, glancing at the warhead. “Wow.”

“Okay, almost done,” Hope called. 

Steve shifted anxiously, looking up at the cameras. There seemed to be nothing wrong, and the skeleton crew outside the bunker weren’t running to kill them yet. They just needed to get it done and move to the next one.

“Done!” Hope said, pushing up. “C’mon, next one.”

“Pray I don’t puke,” Bruce added, taking Steve’s hand. “This shadow stuff is pretty unpleasant.”

“Sorry, pal,” Steve offered sympathetically.

They kept moving. Each warhead took fifteen minutes or so to see the program installed and begin its work. Steve didn’t really understand how it worked, how they could plug a computer into the warhead and have it take the whole thing down, but Tony insisted it would. Peggy trusted Tony, so Steve trusted him. By the last one, all of them were jittery and eager to get back to their base. The last warhead wasn’t actually in a bunker, it was above ground in the remains of a valley, surrounded by dead trees and vegetation. 

Steve was pushed to thinking about Bucky again. He picked up a dead branch, the leaves crumbling in his hands. He shook his head slowly, his heart sinking even deeper in his chest.

“Nothing you can do about it, buddy,” Clint said gently to Steve.

“No,” Steve answered quietly.

“Nearly done,” Bruce reported. 

Steve put the branch down and moved nearer to the others. Wind cut through the valley, biting at Steve’s skin. He shivered and hugged himself.

“Okay,” Bruce said, “alright, we can go.”

Steve reached out to take their hands. Hope put away the computers while Bruce replaced the panel they’d taken off the warhead, then they all gathered close. Steve pulled them into a shadow, returning to Peggy’s base.

Strange’s portal sparked its beginning just as they appeared. Steve brushed snow off himself, then a roar split through the room and the portal opened completely.

“We could use some help!” Strange shouted through it.

Romanoff ran. Steve followed, nearly everyone else on her heels. They jumped through the portal, landing in a field of snow by another warhead. Fury and Hill were firing at Bucky, who was trying to stomp them under his feet. Steve ran for him.

“Get back, get back!” Romanoff shouted at him. “You’re in the line of fire!”

Bucky roared again, the sound shaking his eardrums. Steve jumped on one of his legs and tried climbing up. Bucky snarled and grabbed at him, but Steve jumped up again and climbed onto his shoulders, holding onto his antlers. 

“Get down!” Fury yelled at him.

“Wake up!” Steve screamed in Bucky’s face. “Wake up!”

Bucky grabbed him, his whole hand crushing Steve’s torso, and then he was flying through the air. Steve hit the warhead and then the ground. 

“Shoot him!” Steve heard people screaming. “In the head, the head!”

Bucky picked Steve up, swiping him off the snow, and Steve groaned as he felt bones going places they shouldn’t be. Bucky threw him in another direction. A portal opened and then Steve dropped into a pile of snow with a grunt.

“You idiot!” Strange snapped at him. 

“I need to save him,” Steve mumbled in a daze.

“We need to  _ kill _ him,” Strange shouted. “Your friend is gone, nothing left to save, when will you get that through your thick skull!”   
  


Steve sat up, rubbing his head. He grimaced as he felt his back flare in pain, his feet tingling. He saw Thor and Brunnhilde attacking Bucky, with Fury and Romanoff and Hill and Barton firing their guns, but everything deflected off of Bucky’s skin like it was paper. Strange was throwing these orange discs, but they didn’t seem to be working. Bucky knocked Romanoff off her feet, sending her flying, then kicked the rifle out of Fury’s hands and crushed it. Steve tried to stand up, but his legs collapsed. Strange glanced at him, then grabbed his hip and turned him over with glowing hands.

“That’s a spinal injury,” Strange said quickly. “Stay put, I’ll see what I can do to heal you later.”

Steve collapsed into the snow, shaking his head. Strange ran off, still attacking. Steve felt a root underneath him, magic deep in the earth, and tried to encourage it. Bucky would notice and run to stop him, and Steve could try to pull them both out of the human world. He could try. He had to try.

Bucky noticed. He heard another roar, the ground shook, and Steve lifted his head weakly to see Bucky running across the field with his antlers lowered. Steve reached for a shadow, pushing into it. A small sapling pushed through the snow and Steve focused on keeping it green. Bucky screamed at him, the sound tearing at his heart and his ears, and snatched Steve off the ground again, pinning him to a dead tree.

Bucky growled in his face. Steve struggled, trying to find a shadow. Bucky pressed a hand to his throat, his black eyes narrowed. Steve sputtered and grabbed at his face.

“Buck,” he wheezed. “Bucky, please –”

Bucky growled deeper, leaning closer like he wanted to watch the light leave Steve’s eyes. Steve grabbed onto both of Bucky’s antlers and tried shaking him, but black spots were appearing in his vision and his focus was slipping. Bucky licked his lips then bared his teeth. Steve, head spinning, just pulled him in and their mouths crashed together.

He didn’t know why he did it. But he did. And when they connected in a kiss, Bucky’s hand released his throat. Bucky gasped. Steve slipped on the tree, but Bucky caught him, lifting him up and cradling him close. Steve inhaled, woozy, and blinked up at Bucky.

“Stevie?” Bucky whispered, his eyes their correct blue.

Steve let out a sob and threw his arms around Bucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _HA TRUE LOVE'S KISS! there's two more chapters, but both are epilogue style, so they'll both come out tomorrow. this is the end, thanks for sticking to it_


	13. Closing Monologues, Scene I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _this is it guys, thanks for coming along for the ride_

#  **_Closing Monologues, Scene I_ **

  
  


“One second, the Winter Soldier was choking the life out of Rogers, and the next –” Clint cut off, shaking his head.

“The next, Steve was kissing him and then they were gone,” Natasha finished for him.

Peggy’s eyes widened. She shook her head.

“Clear as day,” Clint said, shrugging. “Full lip-lock.”

“I don’t –” Peggy murmured. “I don’t understand?”   


“Rogers didn’t tell us everything, that simple,” Natasha said. “Who knows, maybe True Love’s Kiss broke the spell.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Strange muttered.

“Guys?” Tony called. “Look at this.”

Natasha looked up, followed by everyone else, to find the outside security cameras popping up on the TVs. One of them was obstructed by something moving, something green but out of focus. The rest –

“Are those trees?” Hill spoke up.

Natasha’s eyes widened. The snow was still there, but grass was poking out of it. Flowers were visible, shades of red and yellow and pink and blue. Full trees stood around the buildings.

“What…?” Natasha whispered.

“Hydra,” Peggy said quickly. “What are they doing?”   


Tony shook his head, clicking and typing. “Going nuts,” he said. “I think – Guys, I think Steve  _ did _ break the Soldier’s curse. They lost control of him. The plants, they didn’t do this.”

“That’s impossible,” Strange insisted.

“But it’s happening?” Hope said. “Real trees…”

“What’s the air quality?” Clint asked excitedly. “I wanna go pick the flowers!”

“It’s going down,” Tony reported in astonishment. “It’s already below four hundred!”

“But the soil?” Natasha muttered. “And – and it’s been five minutes!”

“The Horned God did it,” Thor said, a grin growing on his face. “I told you all. There are beings more powerful than you could ever imagine, right here on your home planet.”

Natasha grabbed a computer, trying to find the news. People weren’t noticing the trees yet, but they would soon. Hydra would try to cover it up, though.

“We need to take them out,” Natasha said quickly. “The Nova Corps need to land, we need the extra hands to hunt out Hydra agents.”

“Tony –?” Peggy called.

“Barricade’s ready to come down,” Tony said. “On your mark.”

Peggy nodded. “Do it.”

Tony bent over his computer, typing again. Then he nodded, standing back.

“Done,” he reported. “Satellites will be crashing into each other, one by one.”

Thor pulled out his communicator, opening it up and activating it. A hologram appeared, then the commander of the Nova Corps generated.

“The barricade is coming down,” he reported. “Can you see it?”

“We can,” the commander answered. “We also registered an unusual spike of energy on the planet, is everything okay there?”

“More than,” Thor replied with a grin. “You’ll see when you land. I’ll explain it then.”   


“Fine, twenty minutes.”

#  **_*_ **

It took seven months to fully wipe Hydra out, but by then, the air quality around the world wasn’t just normal, it was perfect. Natasha watched families leaving the nearby shelters and saw children see flowers and grass for the first time in their lives. Natasha hadn't even seen plants before, she was born after the air crisis began. People cried. She cried.

They didn’t need to evacuate. The winter that had lasted for 40 years ended, spring finally dawning. What little population was left gathered in communities in America, Europe, and Asia to begin rebuilding. Natasha helped plow a field and plant corn.

Nobody could understand what had happened. Natasha felt a little foolish telling people that a god with the legs and horns of a stag had been trapped by old chaos magic, but set free by a kiss, but that was what happened. 

Peggy was unsettled by the truth, and didn’t like talking about it. Sharon told Natasha quietly one afternoon that while Peggy had moved on from Steve after his supposed death, she’d actually loved him. It was a shock to learn he was gay.

She felt a little foolish, but she wanted to try praying. Steve had mentioned that they had a fire, which was how they heard the prayers, and so she figured she should burn something. She wasn’t sure what, but guessed that a simple candle would suffice. So she lit one in the back garden of her cottage, surrounded by flowers and vegetable growth, and sat in front of it.

“Um, hey,” Natasha began awkwardly. “Uh, this is a prayer for the Horned God. Bucky. And Steve. Uh, if you can hear me. Thank you.”

The candle flickered gently in the breeze. Natasha bit at one of her nails.

“Things are better now,” she added. “Way better. The world’s gone back to what it was. I’m growing tomatoes and peppers right now. And I have some lettuce, some potatoes. Some other things. Everybody has their own garden. It’s great. There’s a, uh, a rice farm in Asia that’s started shipping to other communities. They’re using the cleanest fuel they can. Tony’s working on making it better.”

Natasha felt pretty dumb to be sitting on her porch, praying to a candle. It was also rather nice.

“We’re breeding animals again,” she added. “People still mostly eat algae, but it’s good to have vegetables again. And the fish populations are back on the rise. And Bruce is working with some other people to start bringing back animals that went extinct after the air crisis.”

Natasha sighed, picking at her thumb. She shrugged.

“Thank you,” she concluded. “For everything.”

She leaned down and blew out the candle, still feeling a bit silly. She left it on the porch and went about the rest of her day. She and Clint tended the garden, fed the chickens, walked the goats across to another pasture, and then back. They went to bed a bit after dark.

In the morning, Natasha went out to feed the chickens and collect eggs. There was a tree in the middle of her yard, an entire tree that had not been there before. She stared at it in astonishment. There were flowers with green berries. She got closer and realized they were hazelnuts.

Steve had said they burned hazelnuts for prayers. Natasha smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _hazelnut trees were sacred to the ancient celts, btw, they really did represent wisdom, stuff like that. i hope you're enjoying the end_


	14. Closing Monologues, Scene II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _happy ending, guys, it's the last epilogue. thanks for being here with me and for all your comments supporting yet another hella niche idea from me, i love y'all_ <3

#  **_Closing Monologues, Scene II_ **

  
  


Steve woke up feeling warm, safe, and overall, content. His head rested on Bucky’s arm, his body covered by a soft fur blanket. Bucky’s nose was near the back of his neck, but Bucky wasn’t asleep. Steve rolled over, blinking slowly, to find Bucky watching him nervously.

“I’m so sorry,” Bucky whispered.

Steve just grinned. He surged up, arms wrapping around Bucky’s neck, and kissed him. Bucky caught him and pulled him on top of him, hands secure on his back. Steve kissed all over Bucky’s face, then back to his mouth. Bucky caught his cheeks and held him still.

“I’m sorry, Stevie,” Bucky whispered again. “I hurt you, you were – I almost killed you.”

“No,” Steve answered flippantly, “no, that was Hydra’s fault. They hurt you and they made you do the things you did.”

Bucky nodded. “The plants,” he murmured. “They were all gone. I brought them back, then we slept for a while.”

“Good,” Steve answered, kissing him again. “We’ll stay here now. I don’t think we need to fight off any more peat farms or logging companies.”

Bucky looked worried still. Steve pushed his hair back and kissed his forehead.

“It’s alright, Buck,” he murmured. “We’re safe.”

“I healed you,” Bucky said softly. “Your back was broken. There were other things wrong. I fixed it.”

“You didn’t do that to me,” Steve insisted. “It was Hydra. It was their fault.”

Bucky looked worried. Steve kissed it off of his face.

“Make love to me,” Steve murmured. “We’ll eat and rest and make love, nothing else.”

“My sweet,” Bucky rumbled. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Fuck that,” Steve declared, kissing him firmly. “I love you. I’d burn the world down to get you back, Buck.”

Bucky chuckled. “If you did that, I’d just bring it all back.”

“There you go,” Steve said with a grin, sitting back on Bucky’s lap. “We’ll stay together now.”

Bucky smiled. He pulled Steve back down, kissing him gently, then rolled them over. They continued to kiss, lips soft and tender, and their hands moved across their bodies. Bucky touched Steve’s waist, then his hip. Steve touched his chest, his stomach.

Bucky had slick, Steve didn’t know where it came from or what it was made off, but he stuck his hand out and then it was just there. Steve lifted a leg, breath coming fast. Bucky kissed down his chest, then a thick finger pressed behind his balls, smearing slick over his hole. Steve bit his lip, head pressing back, and Bucky growled softly against his throat.

“My sweetheart,” he said. “My precious. I’ll never let you out of my sight again.”

“Better not,” Steve whispered back, his voice hitching.

Bucky fingered him slowly. Steve keened with the pleasure, kissed him over and over again, eventually sobbed from the raw emotion. Bucky’s fingers were thick on their own, but four of them left him feeling both destroyed and needing more. Still on his back, Steve pulled his legs open so Bucky could settle between them.

“I love you, baby,” Bucky said against Steve’s mouth as his cock pressed between his legs.

“Love you,” Steve answered breathlessly. “C’mon, Buck, put it in me, make love to me.”

Bucky’s dick was huge when it was soft, but it felt like a beast entering Steve. He cried out, but refused to stop. Bucky growled as he got halfway in, then louder and deeper the more he pushed in. Steve panted, his mouth hanging open, and groaned loudly as Bucky bottomed out.

“Yes,” Steve whispered, “like that, Buck, that’s perfect.”

“Mine,” Bucky rumbled, his hips flexing shallowly. “My love.”

Steve nodded hard. Bucky began to move faster, still gentle, but his cock was so fucking big that it was always pressing on Steve’s prostate. Steve panted louder as he got closer and closer to his orgasm, eventually running his mouth, and Bucky wrapped a huge hand around his dick to speed it up.

“Buck!” Steve cried as he came.

Bucky followed soon after. He finished with a growl, fucking back into Steve one last time. Steve shivered with the pressure of his seed filling him.

“Love you,” Steve murmured.

Bucky kissed him again. “I love you, too,” he whispered. “So much, Stevie.”

They lay down again. Steve tucked into Bucky’s side, head near his heart. Bucky stroked a hand down his back repetitively. The blankets covered their legs. A curious fox appeared in the entrance to the nest, then chirped and ran off. Steve smiled.

“He’ll tell the others you’re back,” he said softly.

Bucky nodded, kissing Steve’s hair. “We’ll stay here now,” he murmured.

Steve snuggled closer. “Home,” he said.

“Home,” Bucky agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _happy holidays, my loves, i'll see you in the next fic ~~which will actually be pretty soon i have Things to post before new year~~_

**Author's Note:**

>  _this fic is brought to you by[(Not) Another Stucky Big Bang](https://twitter.com/anotherstuckybb). featured in this fic will be art by [Neutralchaos1](https://twitter.com/Neutralchaos1) and [TheOmniPrincess](https://twitter.com/TheOmniPrincess). this fic has been beta'd by [the infamous lexi](https://twitter.com/imamericachavez)._  
>   
>  _you can find me on[twitter](https://twitter.com/moonythejedi) or on [tumblr](http://moonythejedi394.tumblr.com/). thanks for reading!_  
>    
> 


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